The Spire Motorsports driver has appeared to stop caring about what other people say and think.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Carson Hocevar is committed to doing exactly what got him into The Chase.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
“We raced how we raced, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job with it,” Hocevar told me last week at Chase media day. “The mistake would be trying to change who we are or what we do in The Chase, and that’s where a lot of guys try really hard and try too hard and try to get more.<\/p>\n
“We can just race and just have fun with it.\u00a0We\u2019re\u00a0only going to be as fast as we can make our cars and do as good as we can.”<\/p>\n
Is he still having fun after Darlington, where he got into Brad Keselowski in a situation Sunday where it appeared to be avoidable?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Keselowski indicated Hocevar has one coming. In response, Hocevar decided to give an extra six percent (Keselowski\u2019s car number) off on a merchandise sale he had going on through his online platform.<\/p>\n
Social media and industry talk shows have focused on his non-apologetic attitude \u2014 an attitude that looks like could come back to bite him.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Should Hocevar scale back his antics? <\/p>\n
“I’ve just had fun this week with everything,”\u00a0Hocevar said on a virtual news conference on Wednesday. “But I haven’t really watched. I’m not sitting there consuming everything. I make my posts, but normally I post something and I disappear. I don’t even look at the reaction.<\/p>\n
“If I don’t really look at the reaction, I stay truer to myself personally because I’m not able to jump fences for what’s the popular take, right? I can just state my opinion and not get biased.”<\/p>\n
Hocevar doesn\u2019t have many friends in the garage. Ross Chastain co-owns the driver management company whose clients include Hocevar, and Chastain worked with Hocevar when they were teammates in trucks at Niece Motorsports.<\/p>\n
“He\u2019s leaning into it. He\u2019s being Carson,” Chastain told me and other reporters Tuesday night at a NASCAR Foundation event in New York City. “What you see is the Carson I\u2019ve known from the truck series on. He\u2019s Carson. We\u2019re watching him grow up right before our eyes. … That\u2019s putting eyeballs on us. Because you\u2019re watching the chaos.<\/p>\n
“The nickname [of Hurricane Hocevar] is appropriate as we\u2019re watching a kid grow up.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ross Chastain (L) said that nickname “Hurricane Hocevar” fits Carson well. <\/p>\n
Some don’t view Hocevar\u2019s attitude on the track as being his biggest issue. Instead, it’s him embracing the social influencer life and doing things that some believe are designed to sell merchandise or to create a brand on social. As an aside, Hocevar says he does nearly all his own posts.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s wrong with that? Nothing, really, as long as a driver wins occasionally.<\/p>\n
Hocevar has one Cup win, albeit just 15 races ago. He doesn\u2019t necessarily have to challenge for titles. Just winning two or three races a year should serve to show that it isn\u2019t all about selling merch.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, he is going to do it his way.<\/p>\n
“We want to enjoy this, and not just sit back and not say anything, not do anything, or run [minding] our p’s and q’s, per se, and fall in line, and be like \u2018Oh OK, we\u2019ve got to wait until our turn\u2019,” Hocevar said Wednesday. “And well it might not ever be our turn. [So] we can’t have an opinion because we haven’t won enough races or whatever?<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s 200 people in this building [at Spire] that this is their first-ever Chase, and they got two cars and they\u2019ve got two opportunities. It\u2019s not racing for a championship, per se, this year, but it\u2019s Chase experience.”<\/p>\n
Certainly the side show of the Joe Gibbs Racing lawsuit against Spire Motorsports over the hiring of Chris Gabehart doesn\u2019t help.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Denny Hamlin criticized Spire on his podcast. He said that the organization doesn’t have any adults in the room to mentor Hocevar and no one’s telling him what he’s doing wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That was certainly a dig.<\/p>\n
The bad blood between the two organizations goes way deeper than a few Hocevar transgressions.<\/p>\n
Hocevar didn\u2019t let the Hamlin quip go unnoticed when he talked to the media on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“I care about my race team, what they think, what they say … you know, the adults in the room,” Hocevar said during a 42-minute media session.<\/p>\n
Chastain indicated he is still a Hocevar fan. And of course his is because he has a business interest in Hocevar\u2019s success.<\/p>\n
“I’ll still jump up and down when he wins,” Chastain said. “Selfishly, I’d like him to not take my fenders off on his way to it but his cars are so fast right now. He’s bouncing into us, and he’s still going forward. So until we get faster than him, I can’t really say much because I can’t keep up with him.<\/p>\n
“He is that fast. We saw that talent early on.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Carson Hocevar spins after an on-track incident during the NASCAR Cup Series Dollar Tree 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. <\/p>\n
Hocevar insists there was nothing intentional about his spinning Keselowski and felt it was a racing incident. Some would say a driver with his talent would be able to control a car and not do that \u2014 unless the driver is being careless.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Sometimes just s— happens,” Hocevar said Wednesday. “I wasn\u2019t trying to spin him out or wreck him or anything.”<\/p>\n
A driver needs more than raw speed to be successful.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They need to know how to manage races and driver relationships in a way that also allows them to get the most out of their racing and mental strengths.<\/p>\n
So far, it\u2019s debatable whether Hocevar has found the right mix. And how far he can go until he finds it.<\/p>\n
He swears he doesn’t need to and that he isn\u2019t looking to go all that far this year.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re not going to look at the points,” Hocevar told me last week about The Chase. “We’re just going to have fun with it, see where it goes. We\u2019ve\u00a0got a lot of years doing this.<\/p>\n
“Our\u00a0cars aren’t dominant. We don’t seem to be the dominant manufacturer. We’re just going to have fun with it and\u00a0see where we stack up. And hope it\u2019s not last.”<\/p>\n
![\"NASCAR](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1788980653_351_0edf6847-artboard-1-33.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n