compared to Earnhardt this early in his career<\/a>.<\/p>\nWhat makes the victory celebration more special is that it is one Hocevar had planned for quite some time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve dreamt about that in the off-season,\u201d Hocevar said of his unique celebration. \u201cI just wanted to have something that was meaningful for me. I mean, obviously being a [Dale Earnhardt] Jr. fan, I remember that iconic clip, he was inside the car, helmet off, enjoying the fans going backwards. But the fans, they don\u2019t really get to know if they hear \u2019em or see \u2019em and everything. So I had thought of just like, Man, I have really long legs, I wonder if I can hit the throttle and sit on the door and ride, just kind of see everybody.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted them to get as loud as possible. I felt like they would if they could see me seeing them. Yeah, I mean, ultimately I just wanted to make sure I soaked every bit of it in. I think I could tell you what everybody was wearing, where every seat was, where every 77 shirt was. I think I could have pointed it all out to you because I remember it so clearly right now. That means more than anything else to me, just that I know this has been a blur. I could tell you exactly just off turn four, it was like, I have it, to right now, I could tell you every second.\u201d<\/p>\n
Who Is Carson Hocevar?<\/p>\n
Hocevar made his way onto the NASCAR scene in 2019 at just 16 years old. Rapidly, he developed a name for himself, eventually catching the attention of Niece Motorsports, which hired him to compete full time in the Craftsman Truck Series in 2021.<\/p>\n
It was undoubtable that Hocevar had speed, but what lacked was race discipline. Time and again, he\u2019s gotten himself into on-and-off-track battles that have infuriated his competitors.<\/p>\n
Hocevar did not win a race until his third full Truck Series season, when he won at Texas, followed by three additional wins. He qualified for the Championship 4 in 2023, but while racing for it all, wrecked himself and Corey Heim to take both drivers out of the fight for the title.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, after making five O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series starts with JR Motorsports, Hocevar caught the attention of Spire Motorsports. He ran quite well for Spire when he subbed for Corey LaJoie in 2023 at Gateway, when LaJoie competed for Hendrick Motorsports in place of a suspended Chase Elliott.<\/p>\n
Hocevar also ran the No. 42 car in eight races later that year for Legacy Motor Club, in which he showed he has the pace to be a Cup driver.<\/p>\n
Over the last two seasons, he has gradually improved to be a threat for top 10s quite often.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been reliving the same trajectory as my Cup three years,\u201d Hocevar said. \u201cThis has felt almost similar, same sort of team, level, and everything when I was first walking in. I just felt like I watched Niece grow up and get to where it was when it started winning races. Now I\u2019m at Spire at the different level.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I just kept telling myself. It all felt so familiar. I just moved garages, reset the career mode, basically, or season or whatever on the video game. Jeff and I always joke about that, we\u2019re in the video game. When you\u2019re a kid, you might have the custom car, race it up there with \u2014 most of the time easy level is pretty low. Yeah, you\u2019re just in the video game. We finally did it today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carson Hocevar\u2019s Future<\/p>\n
Hocevar could have opted into free agency once his contract with Spire expired. However, he opted to sign a multiyear, long-term deal with the Jeff Dickerson-run organization.<\/p>\n
By doing so, Hocevar strategically made a move that will mean the three-car team will base its future plans on its new star.<\/p>\n
Spire now has a driver whose personality connects with both traditional fans, as well as new ones.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s kind of like this big juxtaposition of how sometimes the garage looks at Carson, then you see the crowd up there going ape-shit while he\u2019s hanging out the window,\u201d Dickerson said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to take stuff like that. That personality connects. Obviously it\u2019s on the drivers. They\u2019re the biggest part of it. It\u2019s going to take the teams and it\u2019s going to take NASCAR itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Spire continues to invest more in its program, its second-ever win comes in the team\u2019s eighth years of competition. Now that Hocevar has one win to his name, more may come.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re going to be dangerous,\u201d Dickerson said. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you enough about the conversations that we have in our shop, how we\u2019ve been building to this moment, how we\u2019ve been believing in each other.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carson Hocevar won his first NASCAR Cup Series race, and celebrated by driver around while hanging outside of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-631115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631115","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=631115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Carson](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2273286520-e1777255096812.jpg\")
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