Carson Hocevar inherited a ride that finished the 2023 season 33rd in NASCAR Cup Series, so the expectations as he entered his first big-league campaign were measured. A Victory Lane visit would probably be a long shot, but steady improvement and building a foundation with his Spire Motorsports No. 77 Chevrolet team were realistic targets. One other goal stood out.
“For us to be Rookie of the Year, that was the thing like, ‘OK, well, we can win this, right?’ ” Hocevar said before the Cup Series finale at Phoenix Raceway. “Everything else would be a bonus.”
Hocevar secured Sunoco Rookie of the Year recognition in his first Cup Series season, joining fellow first-year drivers Jesse Love in the Xfinity Series and Layne Riggs from the Craftsman Truck Series as 2024 honorees. Hocevar’s total was good enough for a 21st-place finish in the Cup Series driver standings, outdistancing the two other full-time rookies on the circuit — Stewart-Haas Racing’s Josh Berry (27th in final points) and Spire teammate Zane Smith (30th).
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Hocevar’s final points position was the best for a Spire driver since co-owners Jeff Dickerson and T.J. Puchyr began fielding Cup Series entries in 2019.
“I feel like teams spend a lot of money to gain two or three spots, right?” Hocevar said. “So to be the highest finishing Spire car ever for their tenure — I think their highest ever is 26th — that’s what I’m probably most proud of is 21st is really good, I thought. Twentieth was about where I really wanted to be. To be really close there is really important. But Rookie of the Year is obviously the only thing you can’t win (later), and I missed out on it my truck year and obviously didn’t run Xfinity, so ideally it’s the last time I can really do it unless I somehow end up back in Xfinity. But yeah, happy to at least have a Rookie of the Year something in my NASCAR tenure.”
Hocevar’s first season showed glimmers of potential, improvement that has been backlit by Spire’s rapid and recent growth. Two of his six top-10 finishes came during the Cup Series Playoffs — a career-best third at Watkins Glen, plus a ninth-place effort at Homestead-Miami where the 21-year-old stood out as a non-playoff driver in a stacked postseason field.
The upswing was offset by his under-caution swipe at fellow driver Harrison Burton at Nashville, a move that drew a $50,000 fine from NASCAR officials and criticism from Cup Series veterans, plus some late-season bumper ruffling at Martinsville. Any youthful aggression was balanced by his consistency elsewhere — he tied for 17th among full-time Cup drivers in average finish (18.3) and absorbed just two DNFs.
“To do that was big for us to have the consistency of it,” Hocevar said. “I think a lot of people would have guessed that I would be in really big highs and lows, and I felt like we’ve been kind of the most consistent of our rookie group. So that’s been fun to do, but we’ve had some really good runs last half of the year, too.”
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The other two rookie award recipients managed to reach Victory Lane in their respective series, with Love clinching an Xfinity Series Playoffs berth by notching a breakthrough win in April at Talladega Superspeedway. Love finished eighth in the Xfinity standings, just missing out on a Championship 4 slot. The 19-year-old will be back for Year 2 with the No. 2 Richard Childress Racing Chevy group in 2025, with Whelen Engineering returning as a primary backer.
“I don’t think you ever want to be fully satisfied if you’re not the champion,” said Love, the 2023 ARCA Menards Series champion. “But at the same time, for me, it was one of those deals where I didn’t expect the world, because I know how I am as a rookie is not super-splashy. Again, I think way too much to kind of fly by the seat of my pants. So once I figured out how to drive the cars and figure out what my balance needs to be and figure out how to communicate better, obviously it got a lot better. So that’s kind of my biggest thing was it was pretty much right on track with how I wanted the year to go. So next year is where I feel I put the pressure on myself and figure out how good I’m going to be.”
Riggs, 22, rallied from an early points deficit and came up just short of making the 10-driver playoff field in his first Craftsman Truck Series season, but he made up for the miss by winning the first two playoff races — Milwaukee and Bristol. He created an unintentional highlight after his first victory, separating his shoulder as he pumped his fist atop his No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford. He took extra care in avoiding injury with his Bristol celebration.
Riggs arrived Friday morning in Charlotte for media interviews with his right arm in a sling, the result of surgery eight days earlier. He said he would begin physical therapy next week and anticipates a full recovery for the start of the season.
“To get our first win there, it kind of made everybody put their eyes on it and realize what was going on,” Riggs said. “I think I made TMZ, I think a couple other places were like, ‘NASCAR driver dislocates shoulder during celebration.’ They didn’t say truck driver, they didn’t say anything, so it got a lot of publicity, got a lot of press. I think my name got heard and seen by more people than it would’ve if it didn’t happen, but definitely wasn’t on purpose. But definitely something memorable, and it’s not going to be a tradition, that’s for sure.”