Carson Hocevar has shown no remorse about earning enemies instead of respect in the NASCAR Cup Series.
On the surface, it seemed his latest on-track misstep might cause the most significant pause in his young racing career. Instead, after a 44-minute news teleconference on Wednesday afternoon, “The Hurricane” maintained this is business as usual for the 23-year-old driver of the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet.
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This time, Hocevar drew the ire of RFK Racing co-owner and driver Brad Keselowski when he sent Keselowski spinning at Lap 107 to end Stage 1 at Darlington Raceway in the opening race of The Chase presented by Mobil 1.
Keselowski was clear in his post-race remarks: “His day is coming, and it’s coming hard. Watch out, Carson.”
And yet Hocevar offered his typical laissez-faire response to both spinning Keselowski and the hinted retribution from the 2012 NASCAR Cup Series champion.
“He spun. I don’t know what happened. He spun,” Hocevar told USA Sports. In a separate interview, he added: “I’ll tighten my belts,” coupled with the tone of a sarcastic eye roll.
On Wednesday, two-and-a-half days removed from the incident, Hocevar was willing to expound on his perspective, but still in a casual fashion.
“[Expletive] happens sometimes when we’re racing hard, right?” Hocevar said. “Like, I think Brad knew how aggressive he was being, racing super hard, obviously trying to keep us behind him. I was racing really hard, trying to be aggressive and just trying to hurt his momentum a lot. And we just got racing really hard, right? And I feel like you put yourself in that spot that it’s going to open up after 10 or 15 laps of — not patience running out, because it just sounds like I’m just trying to turn him after 15 laps and be like, ‘All right, I’m done with you,’ right? But it’s more so when you’re just racing really, really tight within an inch of each other for 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 laps, it just starts to add to the intensity of it and running really hard, and sometimes you just hit.”
The problem for Hocevar is one that has been shouted from the rooftops of the NASCAR garage since his days of making enemies in the Craftsman Truck Series back in 2023: Hocevar has shown little respect, so he has earned little respect.
According to Racing Insights, there have been 16 Cup race weekends since the start of the 2025 season that Hocevar has landed in run-ins with at least one driver. In a 63-race period, that marks a rate of 25.4% — one in every four starts. Those incidents vary from his former Truck Series rival Corey Heim to past Cup champions like Keselowski, Joey Logano, Ryan Blaney and the late Kyle Busch.
Hocevar has defended his racing style wholeheartedly, pointing to his childhood memories of the sport as his driving motivator today.
“I just want to be the race-car driver I would’ve wanted to be a fan of,” Hocevar said in a July 12 appearance on the TNT Sports pre-race show. “So I feel like I owe that to myself and I’ve got to be true to myself and the 5-year-old kid that fell in love with NASCAR, not everybody else that’s basically trying to ruin my dreams of being good, right? Like, they all want that for themselves. So at some point, we’ve all got to be selfish, and I don’t want to get out-selfished basically.”
Hocevar said Wednesday he stands by that outlook, and that has resonated with the fans watching from afar, interacting with Hocevar and his content on social media while also nabbing his merchandise. Following Darlington, the third-year Cup racer offered a discount on his website to mark all items 23% off in honor of how many positions he gained in Sunday’s race. After seeing continued chatter about Keselowski’s comments, Hocevar added an extra 6% off for six hours in honor of Keselowski’s car number.
According to Sports Business Journal, Hocevar’s website “approached nearly $200,000 in sales” in a 24-hour span.
“I’m having the time of my life. I’m enjoying it,” Hocevar said. “We want to win again, right? But at the same point, realistically, we’re still really early in this kind of journey here. So we’re just having fun. We’re trying to go as fast as possible but entertain ourselves per se, and really just play every facet of the game. I mean, since the early 2000s and ‘90s and everything, you saw every driver on [“Saturday Night Live”] and all these other places and merchandise at every sporting event, even if it wasn’t NASCAR. You would have NASCAR merchandise everywhere.
“It’s been a facet of the game for forever. It’s NASCAR how we’ve all known it for as long as I’ve been alive, and people well before I was born, too. We love the fans. We enjoy it. We love the talking points about us and being relevant and us trying to go fast and be in The Chase and being relevant.”
Therein lies much of the source of his competitors’ umbrage. Hocevar has just one win on his Cup Series resume — a rousing victory at Talladega Superspeedway that culminated in a spectacular celebration, followed one week later by an appearance at the Met Gala in New York City.
But from current on-track opponents to Hall of Famers watching and analyzing in media roles today, there aren’t many racers — if any — who are fond of Hocevar’s approach.
Kevin Harvick, the 2014 Cup Series champion and a Class of 2027 NASCAR Hall of Fame electee, said on his “Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour” podcast this week, “he doesn’t know how to play the game.”
“Right now, he’s worried about selling T-shirts and all the things that goes with it,” Harvick said. “You have to be respected by the guys you’re racing against. And right now, there’s not one guy in the garage that respects what he does behind the wheel.”
Denny Hamlin has yet to have a direct run-in with Hocevar, but has seen enough from afar — and a perceived desire for attention from Hocevar — that he opted not to opine on Sunday’s incident with Keselowski directly.
“I’m not going to give him what he wants. I’m not going to give him the clip that he wants. Period,” Hamlin said on Dirty Mo Media’s “Actions Detrimental” podcast. “You want me to talk about Spire? I’ll talk about Spire. There’s no adults in the room, clearly, in that building. No adults. That’s my opinion. Because how can you honestly think that that’s what’s best for your company if you’re running a serious organization? I think they’re unserious.”
2027 Hall of Fame electee Jeff Burton and Hall of Famer Dale Jarrett expressed similar disdain for Hocevar’s lack of respect on the USA Network post-race show following the Southern 500 at Darlington.
Regardless of the conversations that swirl around him, Hocevar said Wednesday he only puts stock into what team owner Jeff Dickerson says and the people within the walls of Spire Motorsports.
“I think a lot of people misinterpret me having fun or our team having fun and being maybe unserious at times, that we don’t care,” Hocevar said. “And I think ultimately, we just want to enjoy every aspect of the game, and part of the game is loving up to the fans. I mean, there’s a reason we do driver intros. It’s the reason we do all this stuff. It’s the reason we’re out there in the merch trailer. It’s the reason drivers are so available. It’s a facet of the game, and we enjoy that and we love that. But also, too, we love going as fast as possible and enjoying it. …
“I just care what Jeff, the sponsors and my team says. Whether their opinion changes because of what Brad or Denny or any of these guys think, that’s all relevant, right? That’s all included. So then I do care, right? But I think ultimately, racing’s a family sport and this is a family. I just care what my family thinks ultimately.”
MORE: The people and places that shaped Hocevar
As it stands, Hocevar enters 12th in the NASCAR Cup Series points standings for Sunday’s second race of The Chase at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway (3 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Hocevar is one of just 16 drivers still eligible to win the 2026 Cup Series championship, currently 89 points behind series leader Hamlin with nine races remaining. He knows he and his team aren’t the “dominant car” right now, he said. That has led to a “house money” mantra shared among the No. 77 team entering The Chase.
Of course, Hocevar still says winning the championship is the ultimate goal. But the fun of the fandom is what’s really driving him forward.
“Everybody that I hear (when) they win a championship, they never really tell the story of the race,” Hocevar said. “They always tell the story of what it was like after or before, with all their guys, or with all their people, with all their friends, with all their family. So the fans are just another element to that, in my opinion. I think it has to go together personally.”
The question remains whether the championship is tangible for Hocevar if he continues to frustrate the drivers he is trying to beat.