The Coca-Cola 600 only lasted 559.5 miles this year, but Daniel Suarez’s first win in the Crown Jewel event was still sweet.
The Spire Motorsports driver was in the lead with 27 laps to go as heavy rain hit the Charlotte Motor Speedway and the race was called 27 laps short of its planned 400 laps.
Suarez was coming off of a two-tire stop that leapfrogged him to the lead during a caution period caused by lightning. Several other drivers opted for four tires, while some teams were caught off guard expecting a 30-minute lightning hold that race stewards deemed to be unnecessary.
Suarez got a push on the restart from fellow Chevrolet driver Kyle Larson in the Hendrick Motorsports No. 5 and pulled out to a comfortable lead. Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin got past Larson, but couldn’t make up ground on Suarez before the yellow came out.
The win was particularly meaningful to Suarez, who had been mentored by the late Kyle Busch, who was honored with a pre-race ceremony, when he first came to America in 2015.
“This one really means a lot,” Suarez said after the race. “If if wasn’t for Kyle, I wasn’t going to be an Xfinity champion, I wasn’t going to have my shot in the Cup Series, and to be able to win this race for him, it’s unbelievable.”
The win was Suarez’s first since Atlanta in February 2024 and first with his new team, Spire Motorsports, which he joined this season. Bell, Hamlin, Tyler Reddick and Larson rounded out the top five finishers.
The race also saw a milestone achieved as Katherine Legge became the first woman to compete in Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day. Legge retired from the Indy 500 after just 18 laps when she got caught up in another car’s wreck, but she was still on the track at the end of the Coca-Cola 600 and finished 31st. She is just the sixth person to do the double and the oldest at 45.
