{"id":891996,"date":"2026-09-11T17:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T17:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/891996\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T17:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T17:12:11","slug":"freddie-kraft-unloads-on-carson-hocevar-after-latest-wreck-youre-just-playing-a-fing-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/891996\/","title":{"rendered":"Freddie Kraft unloads on Carson Hocevar after latest wreck: ‘You\u2019re just playing a f***ing game’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carson Hocevar’s spin of Brad Keselowski, and his subsequent interview shrugging off the contact, have dominated the NASCAR conversation<\/a> in the week after Darlington.<\/p>\n

Denny Hamlin has weighed in<\/a>, as have NASCAR Hall of Famers<\/a>, as has Hocevar’s team owner<\/a>, and many, many others.<\/p>\n

Freddie Kraft, spotter for Bubba Wallace and host of the Door Bumper Clear podcast, had some especially sharp words for Hocevar after the exchange<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I can\u2019t decide if I want to unload or just laugh it off,” Kraft said. “He wants attention. I heard Denny\u2019s show yesterday where he said, ‘I\u2019m not giving him the clip he wants.’ I\u2019m going to give him the clip he wants, because he\u2019s doing dumb sh*t. I\u2019m going to call him out on it.”<\/p>\n

Kraft was angry with Hocevar on several fronts. First, he took issue with how flippant Hocevar has come across over his recent wrecks, and Spire’s decision to lean into the controversy.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s funny to me because they put out that stupid social post the other day<\/a>, which was just ammunition for every other team in the sport, where it\u2019s a picture of him and every derogatory thing,” Kraft said. “It\u2019s like they\u2019re celebrating it. And then he gets out of the car the other night and he\u2019s talking about, ‘Well I just do it for clicks. I just do it for clicks.’ So now the first thing you\u2019re thinking about in your interview when you just got done racing the Southern 500 is what we said on this podcast or what somebody else said about you somewhere else on a different show? That shouldn\u2019t be your f***ing mindset.”<\/p>\n

But on a different level, Kraft is also frustrated with what he sees as Hocevar wasting his talents.<\/p>\n

“My biggest problem is that I think he could be one of the best drivers in our sport,”\u00a0he said. “Because I think if he just f***ing focused on driving the race car to the best of its ability, he could be as great as he wants to be.”<\/p>\n

“My anger isn\u2019t because he spun Brad out or did a stupid interview. My anger is he\u2019s wasting how talented he is playing a f***ing game. It\u2019s a game to him.”<\/p>\n

Kraft lamented that he had given Hocevar the clip he wanted, but stood by his decision to call him out.<\/p>\n

“He\u2019s going to enjoy the fact that I\u2019m this mad about it,” Kraft said. “You know what I mean? ‘Haha, look I got him again.’ Meanwhile, you\u2019re the one plummeting in the standings. If you\u2019re just happy pissing me off every week, good. If this is the attention you want, good, you got it.”<\/p>\n

“As long as people are going to do dumb sh*t, we\u2019re going to talk about it on this show,” he concluded.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Kraft was mad at Hocevar for what he saw as wasted potential, there was one aspect of the controversy that he was all in favor of \u2014 Hocevar’s drop down the standings.<\/p>\n

After climbing as high as fifth in the standings in late July, Hocevar dropped down to 12th by the start of the Chase<\/a> due to a poor finish to the regular season. Kraft and the No. 23 team meanwhile, jumped four spots in the standings at Darlington<\/a>, including right over Hocevar.<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carson Hocevar’s spin of Brad Keselowski, and his subsequent interview shrugging off the contact, have dominated the NASCAR…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,26749,56571,56523,309043,634,3628,18143,82],"class_list":["post-891996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-carson-hocevar","tag-darlington-ii","tag-darlington-raceway","tag-freddie-kraft-unloads-on-carson-hocevar-after-latest-wreck-youu2019re-just-playing-a-fing-game","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup","tag-spire-motorsports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891996","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=891996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}