{"id":856841,"date":"2026-09-22T17:46:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T17:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/856841\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T17:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T17:46:14","slug":"denny-hamlins-main-issue-with-carson-hocevar-is-off-track-disrespect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/856841\/","title":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin&#8217;s main issue with Carson Hocevar is off-track &#8216;disrespect&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When speaking with Ryan Blaney on his podcast, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vaYfQVuJ-2A\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" data-custom-text=\"1\">Actions Detrimental<\/a>, Denny Hamlin explored why Carson Hocevar agitates the rest of the garage, and it goes beyond his aggressive driving style.<\/p>\n<p>He noted how nonchalant attitude after most of these incidents, and how Hocevar quickly put a 6% discount for six hours on his merch after wrecking Brad Keselowski at Darlington, and then a 12% discount for 12 hours after wrecking Blaney at Bristol.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think that&#8217;s where a little bit of the disconnect between what the drivers feel and what the fans feel about Carson Hocevar,&#8221; explained Hamlin. &#8220;Again, I&#8217;m not a Carson Hocevar hater whatsoever. I think that he&#8217;s doing a lot of good things for the sport. But I think that disconnect comes from as drivers &#8212; I don&#8217;t handle &#8212; and I&#8217;m only going to speak for myself here &#8212; I don&#8217;t handle the disrespect very well.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the off track stuff of like, hey another 6% off or another 12% off. To me, that would bug me. If that was me and he runs an 11% discount after he just crashed me, that would bother me as much as the on-track, and the on-track really hurts because I put so much work and effort into this. I don&#8217;t want someone out there just being nonchalant playing a game at my expense.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And that&#8217;s where I could potentially get really off the rails, if it were to happen to me, because as drivers, we all live in our own personal team cocoon &#8230; when you feel like someone makes an egregious mistake or an egregious take out of you, it&#8217;s an indictment of your weekend.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/carson-hocevar-spire-motorspor.jpg\" alt=\"Carson Hocevar, Spire Motorsports\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" loading=\"lazy\"\/> <\/p>\n<p class=\"title\">Carson Hocevar, Spire Motorsports<\/p>\n<p class=\"photographer\">Photo by: Chris Graythen &#8211; Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>He went on to say how much pressure there is to perform, and when you have another driver &#8220;publicly not taking it as serious,&#8221; that becomes an issue.<\/p>\n<p>Hamlin noted that the off-track attitude is what&#8217;s really inflaming tensions between Hocevar and the rest of the garage.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m out here to try to win and this is all I&#8217;ve ever wanted to do since I was a kid,&#8221; continued Hamlin. &#8220;So that&#8217;s where to me, it eats at me a little bit because it&#8217;s all I&#8217;ve ever done and wanted to do and wanted to accomplish. And so I can see where Brad could get really upset and whoever else that had had those incidents.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;To me personally, I feel like if a driver has done you wrong on the racetrack, then takes it to the next level and is mildly disrespectful off the track, that&#8217;s where things really can escalate. And I think that&#8217;s where the field has a different opinion of Carson as the fans. I think that Carson goes above and beyond for the fans aspect of it. But again, the competitor aspect &#8212; I think the disrespect is just a little bit too much. And that&#8217;s just my opinion of it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Hocevar in private vs. public<br \/>\n   <img decoding=\"async\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/carson-hocevar-with-fans-no-77.jpg\" alt=\"Carson Hocevar with fans, No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" loading=\"lazy\"\/> <\/p>\n<p class=\"title\">Carson Hocevar with fans, No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet<\/p>\n<p class=\"photographer\">Photo by: Jeff Curry \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, Hamlin said that there&#8217;s also a disconnect between\u00a0Hocevar&#8217;s words in public interviews and how he carries himself in private. He has said that he has no friends in the garage and presents &#8216;don&#8217;t give a s*** attitude,&#8217; but Hamlin has had conversations with Hocevar that say otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know how much of that is real, because I&#8217;ve had conversations with Carson, and he&#8217;s been very receptive. Or at least he&#8217;s been receptive to my face, in the sense of like, okay I hear you.&#8217; He&#8217;s never pushed back and said, &#8216;I don&#8217;t care about what you think.&#8217; I don&#8217;t know how much of that is just playing the role. It would be very hard for me to envision any young person, like in basketball, why would I listen to what Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and Magic Johnson have to say. I don&#8217;t care what they say. No one would ever say that. If you&#8217;re a young guy, you&#8217;re always looking to soak in information. I think he does,l he just doesn&#8217;t do it publicly.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the first part of the podcast, Blaney gave a detailed account of the fight and his thoughts on it, which you can watch below<a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/nascar-cup\/news\/ryan-blaney-says-i-got-my-ass-kicked-in-first-interview-after-carson-hocevar-fight-\/10857820\/\" data-custom-text=\"1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> or read about HERE.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read Also:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"sizer\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAJCAYAAAA7KqwyAAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAABpJREFUeNpi\/P\/\/PwMlgImBQjBqwLAwACDAAOVfAw9\/ZDvcAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"title\">Watch: From on-track to fight, this is what happened between Blaney and Hocevar<\/p>\n<p>            We want your opinion!<\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-auto\">What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n<p>            <a href=\"#\" class=\"ms-link text-link font-bold\">Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-1 text-body\">&#8211; The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When speaking with Ryan Blaney on his podcast, Actions Detrimental, Denny Hamlin explored why Carson Hocevar agitates the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[89790,13089,4565,11050,361872,425,6327,8656,99],"class_list":["post-856841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-bristol-ii","tag-bristol-motor-speedway","tag-carson-hocevar","tag-denny-hamlin","tag-denny-hamlins-main-issue-with-carson-hocevar-is-off-track-disrespect","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup","tag-ryan-blaney","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}