Inside The Garage: Just How Bad do Drivers Want to Beat Former Teammates?

Here’s what’s happening this week Inside The Garage:

Darlington Raceway (Darlington, S.C.) — Daniel Suarez didn’t bother to talk to Ross Chastain in the days following their argument last week at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

He figured it wouldn’t do any good.

“It’s kind of like when you make your girlfriend mad,” Suarez said with a laugh.

Truth is, Suarez (driver of the Spire No. 7 car) has had plenty of “girlfriends” in the Cup garage. He has raced for five different Cup teams. So he is used to racing against drivers who, like Chastain at Trackhouse Racing, he used to call teammates.

Their little dust-up brought to light that sometimes former teammates can have issues with each other on the track. While often the focus is on how teammates race each other, the way former teammates race each other is not a topic often explored.

“Honestly, tell me if I’m wrong, but I’m trying to think back, and I never had any issues with any of my teammates,” Suarez told me and other reporters during the weekend at Darlington. “The thing is that last year was very, very difficult.

“You guys only know 20 percent of the stuff that actually happened. And maybe one day I will write a book and you guys will find out everything that exactly how things happen. But last year was very, very difficult, definitely one of the most difficult years I have had in my career the way that things the way that things played out.”

Are former Trackhouse teammates Daniel Suarez (L) and Ross Chastain now foes?

For Suarez, who has been released from a few teams, it would be normal to have some animosity and want to beat his former team. On the INDYCAR side, much is made of Andretti Global driver Will Power and whether he wants to beat the Team Penske drivers more than others. Power has insisted he isn’t focused on his former teammates.

In NASCAR, drivers appear to move on relatively quickly. They can see from history that it can be for the best. Look at Joey Logano, who appeared his career might be over when he got released by Joe Gibbs Racing but then won three championships driving for Team Penske in the No. 22 car. 

“In the back of your mind you want to beat them, there’s no doubt, but I don’t know if I did much differently,” Logano told me. “I know I had drama with them, but I don’t think it was because of that. It was just circumstances.

“You’re still just trying to prove your own career at that point. And you’re trying to prove that you belong and that you’re trying to extend your career into the next chapter.”

For the last 20 years, Denny Hamlin has seen drivers come and go from JGR.

“Truthfully, my relationship with my teammates always got better when we were no longer teammates,” Hamlin, driver of the No. 11 car, said in a pre-practice news conference. “That’s just factual.

“We always were closer after their time was up. … It’s different for everyone, but certainly you can’t stop human nature.”

One of those was Kyle Busch, who couldn’t agree to terms to remain at Hendrick Motorsports and JGR during his career.

“All the Gibbs guys I’ve always gotten along well with, so none of those guys, especially Martin [Truex Jr.] for sure, but even Denny [Hamlin] we’ve always been fine,” Busch, driver of the RCR No. 8 car, told me. “Once you have issues with guys, then you kind of race in a little bit differently, like Christopher [Bell] ran over me a couple times at COTA so that didn’t go over well for a while.

“When I left Hendrick, I would say you ran those guys hard because you were disappointed in not being there anymore. But you’re also running those guys hard just because of how good they are. You’re racing Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. We had plenty of battles where we were racing for wins, but it was always cordial.”

RCR driver Kyle Busch has made some enemies along the way during his career.

Busch replaced Tyler Reddick, who surprised RCR by leaving for 23XI Racing. He initially signed with 23XI during the 2022 season — to not start at 23XI until 2024. RCR eventually released him to go to 23XI starting in 2023 when it was able to land Busch.

“Me and Austin [Dillon] always raced each other pretty hard but fair, you know, and so nothing really has changed there,” Reddick, who has already won four races this season in the No. 45 car of team owner Michael Jordan, told me and other reporters about his former RCR teammate. “Kyle has always been respectful, too.

“That was one thing about Kyle that was cool. As I was trying to make my name here from the very early days, I always raced him with respect. So he always gave me that respect right back.”

Reddick indicated any beefs between ex-teammates fly more under the radar than they did between Chastain and Suarez. Brad Keselowski, who has raced at Team Penske and then for his own team at RFK Racing, said it all depends on how the relationship ended.

“It’s more about how you leave than anything else,” Keselowski told me. “Some departures are easier than others. I could understand that there’s always going to be some animosity amongst teams and drivers when that happens. … Ultimately, I want to beat everybody. I don’t want to beat one car, whether it be a former teammate or not.”

Keselowski and other drivers said they don’t think about it much when they are racing other drivers or if they are behind two former teammates battling for a spot. 

“I just assume everybody’s going to run into everybody all the time, being honest,” Keselowski said. “When you’re thinking about those things, you’re not thinking about doing your job at the highest level possible — whether that’s hitting a certain spot on the racetrack or getting the right slide in the car and all those types of pieces. So I try not to let other pieces of information enter my brain.”

Like other sports, there is a dynamic of the former teammates knowing each other’s tendencies better, so they know how to potentially take advantage of their weaknesses. Michael McDowell said his former Front Row Motorsports teammates, such as Todd Gilliland, know him well.

“I shared every secret of my entire life with [Gilliland],” McDowell told me and other reporters. “I thought I was staying there forever. I wish I wouldn’t have told them.

“I’m being serious. I’d never planned on leaving. And so I was an open book. Everything that I’ve learned and done and approach he knows.”

Todd Gilliland (L) and Michael McDowell were close when teammates at Fronto Row Motorsports.

One specific NASCAR driver does have reason to be angry with a couple teams. Zane Smith was on loan from Trackhouse to Spire in 2024 and struggled early. He was released from Trackhouse without ever competing in a race for them.

“I was definitely in an interesting spot because I was like half-pregnant with two teams,” Smith told me and other reporters.

He said he has put it behind him.

“I don’t care who you are. I feel like whether you’re let go from a team or whatnot, you’re going prove to them that they were wrong no matter what the situation is,” Smith said. “I think you’re seeing some of that.

“Who knows how that relationship ended? You never know with any of these teams how it ended. And from the outside, there’s a lot probably people just don’t know, for both sides.”

That’s what Suarez indicated in what he was saying. And he indicated he isn’t focused on his former teammates.

“I’m not even thinking about any of the Trackhouse cars or any of the competitors,” Suarez said. “It’s me versus me. And I always say that I’m trying to be the best version of myself.

“And it just happens that I’ve been racing, especially with the 1 [of Chastain] quite a bit, because we’ve been kind of racing together.”

In The News

-A couple of teams made their Indy 500 one-off entries official: Helio Castroneves will return with Meyer Shank Racing and Takuma Sato will be in a fourth car for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. That gives the Indy 500 32 confirmed entries (including the Andretti Global additional entry that is expected to go to Colton Herta). Chevrolet still has two engine packages unaccounted for that would have been used if Prema had made the grid for the 2026 season. Whether Prema could run a car in May is still to be determined.

Helio Castroneves will make another appearance in the Indy 500.

-A hearing is set for Thursday in Joe Gibbs Racing’s request to extend a temporary restraining order into a preliminary injunction against Spire Motorsports Chief Motorsports Officer Chris Gabehart. The injunction keeps Gabehart from performing similar duties to what he did as competition director at JGR. There also has been expedited discovery into Gabehart’s role and whether he shared any JGR technical info with Spire. Gabehart had taken photos of various JGR setup information and other company information.

-NASCAR suspended three Big Machine Racing crew members — crew chief Patrick Donahue, car chief Dillon Bassett and engineer Morgan Olsen — for four races for ballast coming out of the Patrick Staropoli car late in the race at Las Vegas.

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In Inside The Garage, Bob Pockrass takes us behind the scenes of the motorsports world the way only he can.