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    Kevin Baxter: NASCAR hopes Daniel Suárez's historic win marks turning point in diversity drive

    by Kevin Baxter, Los Angeles Times Jun 24, 2022 8 minutes
    Daniel Suárez celebrates after becoming the first Mexican-born driver to win a NASCAR Cup race with his victory in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway on June 12, 2022.

    SONOMA, Calif. — For Daniel Suárez, driving was never the problem. From the first time he sat behind the wheel of a go-kart as a 10-year-old in Mexico, it was clear he could get a car around a racetrack better than just about anyone.

    Yet to cash in on that talent in stock-car racing he would have to go to the U.S. He would have to go to NASCAR. And that's where the cartoons came in.

    "I was scared I would not be able to compete because I didn't speak English. And I didn't have money to do classes to speak English," he said. "So I had to learn by myself by watching cartoons."

    As a result, Bugs Bunny might have had more to do with Suárez's historic victory at Sonoma Speedway earlier this month than either Joe Gibbs or Kyle Busch, the first two team owners who hired him. Without the cartoons, Suárez said, he would have returned home to Monterrey long before becoming the first Mexican to drive on to victory lane at the end of a NASCAR Cup Series race.

    "Every NASCAR driver has had a tough journey," he said. "But my journey is definitely the most different; leaving my family and my country and coming to a different culture, a different language."

    If that journey against long odds

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