LONG POND, Pa. — Carson Hocevar entered Pocono Raceway Saturday as a hot topic of conversation all over again.
The 22-year-old sophomore racer for Spire Motorsports reignited a feud with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in Mexico City — only one week after their tensions cooled. He was also fined $50,000 by Spire Motorsports for derogatory comments Hocevar made about Mexico City on a livestream before the weekend began.
MORE: Details on Hocevar fine | Pocono schedule
Before shifting his attention back to the race track, Hocevar reflected on his comments, which disparaged Mexico City before he ventured south of the United States border.
“The issue wasn’t the team having their frustrations that I’m giving my opinion and putting it out there,” Hocevar said. “It’s the fact that my opinion wasn’t my opinion. It was just based off everything else that I’ve heard or seen, right? I didn’t go do my own homework and voice my own opinion. I didn’t give it a shot. I didn’t give it a chance. I didn’t go walk around. I didn’t go see it. When I did, then hindsight’s 20/20, then I have my own opinion. But I’ve already put it out there. So I think that was the biggest thing was like — I wasn’t doing what I pride myself of doing, (which is) just having my own opinion, putting it out there and being me. I just didn’t give it a fair shot, so I think that’s where it all stems from.”
Hocevar, who finished 13th in Friday’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, is also expecting Stenhouse to claim some sort of retribution after contact at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez from the lapped car of Hocevar spun lead-lap-racer Stenhouse out of position, their second run-in in three weeks.
“The scorecard has it that I’m getting something from the 47 at some point, right?” Hocevar said. “And I think my team and everybody kind of knows that. But at the same time, it’s ideally just the 47, right? It’s not an open hunting season on the 77 because of these incidents. It’s kind of oscillated to when the 47 has a moment that he wants to take at us or take a shot, it’s just like — OK, that’s probably fair. But with everybody else, my team has reassured me that this isn’t open hunting season. We are going to race like we’ve raced; let’s just not create more enemies that we start getting shots back at us.
“But we’re still just going to go race, be aggressive and defend ourselves when we need to. But this is, unfortunately, now a 2-0 scorecard. I’ve been a fan of the sport for a long time. You know the game; you’ve seen it and everything. But we just go race.”
Hocevar is no stranger to controversy, even in just his second year inside the NASCAR Cup Series. On-track run-ins have overshadowed his consistent and impressive speed dating back to his years competing as a full-time Truck Series driver from 2021-23. He knows his reputation precedes him, even with Cup veterans who have watched Hocevar come up through the ranks.
“I already have that image, right? Like it’ll never go away,” Hocevar said. “I could go three years from now and it’s just like oh, I’m back, per se. I think I’ve already made that image before I got in this garage, and I think it’s just trying to balance one thing of owning it and trying to change the narrative while still being like, yeah, I get it. Like I’m aware of this and knowing that.”
The same overaggression that has cost Hocevar has also rewarded him. In addition to five career Truck wins, Hocevar has earned two top fives, three top 10s and his first Busch Light Pole Award in the Cup Series this season. But he has also finished 24th or worse in five of the last six races, the lone exception a runner-up finish at Nashville Superspeedway, the same night he first turned Stenhouse.
“I’ve just been a fan forever, right? And you always saw the rookie get pushed around and kind of have to pay their dues,” Hocevar said. “And I was just like, man, if I’m ever in that spot, I’m never going to get pushed around. That’s how you lose opportunities of races. You never know how long you’re going to be in the garage, for one. None of us have a shot clock waiting on us. You never know.
“So, for me, I want to take advantage of every opportunity I have out there and have no regrets of the effort I’ve put in. And maybe at times, instead of just not letting myself get pushed over, I’m trying to push other people over, and that was the wrong mindset or wrong decision at times.”
Those mistakes have weighed on him mentally, he said. Still, he knows he can’t sacrifice speed for the sake of making friends on the track.
“Just because I do something in the heat of the moment or maybe do it two or three times, doesn’t mean I’m not hard on myself for those mistakes because they are mistakes,” Hocevar said. “It’s just trying not to make that a pattern. But when you’re constantly making aggressive moves like we’re doing, it’s balancing that fine line of, you make a thousand moves a day. Just unfortunately, what people remember isn’t always the good ones. You always remember the negative ones. So that’s just trying to limit the negative ones a lot more.”
