{"id":559658,"date":"2026-03-25T12:03:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T12:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/559658\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T12:03:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T12:03:12","slug":"nascar-legend-kyle-petty-hits-out-at-whiners-over-carson-hocevar-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/559658\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR legend Kyle Petty hits out at ‘whiners’ over Carson Hocevar success"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASCAR<\/a> legend Kyle Petty has once again warned the sport about the dangers of underestimating Carson Hocevar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The young Spire Motorsports<\/a> driver came from the back of the field to claim fourth place at Darlington on Sunday, a run which sent Petty’s already obvious enthusiasm into overdrive.<\/p>\n

Petty hailed the drive \u2013 run in a Dale Earnhardt tribute throwback pain scheme \u2013 as ‘flipping fantastic’, insisting that the sport is going to have to contend with Hocevar sooner rather than later, instead of writing him off as a fast but reckless annoyance.<\/p>\n

Hocevar, it should be noted, is yet to win a Cup Series race as he competes in his third full-time season, and is locked into a contract at least into the 2030s for a team that has won one Cup race in its history (Justin Haley at Daytona, in 2019).<\/p>\n

NASCAR TODAY: Denny Hamlin issues retirement update and Kyle Busch talks Cup Series future<\/a><\/p>\n

Petty: Whine all you want, Hocevar will win races<\/p>\n

Speaking on NASCAR Inside the Race<\/a>, Petty said: \u201cHocevar is going to have to be contended with at some point in time. I said it when everyone was whining about him a few weeks ago. Whine all you want to.<\/p>\n

“He\u2019s going to come in here and he\u2019s going to take your seconds, he\u2019s going to take your thirds, he\u2019s going to take your fourths and fifths, and he\u2019s going to win some races. He did it in this Earnhardt-esque car, which was just flipping fantastic.<\/p>\n

“When I look at Hocevar, and I talked about Reddick being a little bit of a reminder of Cale Yarborough, these are throwback drivers. These guys are changing the sport, they’re going to continue to change the sport. I told you, I\u2019ve got my Hocevar lifetime membership. I\u2019m in that fan club. I\u2019m going to the convention.”<\/p>\n

As well as Hocevar has started the season \u2013 with fourth place finishes at Atlanta and Darlington and good pace elsewhere \u2013 the ‘seconds and thirds’ Petty is promising haven’t arrived for a little while, with Hocevar’s last top-three finish coming 28 races ago.<\/p>\n

His talent remains undoubted, but a number of people in the sport would like to see the wins column start to fill up before anointing him the future of NASCAR.<\/p>\n

Among those? Hocevar himself, who’s had to speak out to calm comparisons to Dale Earnhardt, saying last week: \u201cI don\u2019t even really like the comparison. I mean, I appreciate it obviously, but I feel like we\u2019ve probably should have won a race now.”<\/p>\n

NASCAR STANDINGS: Tyler Reddick takes huge lead as multiple NASCAR champions demoted after Darlington<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR legend Kyle Petty has once again warned the sport about the dangers of underestimating Carson Hocevar. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-559658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}