HAMPTON, Ga. — Carson Hocevar finished second but made no friends Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
In the end, however, he knows the stat sheet doesn’t include a column for friends made. So this answer either makes him sound brash or just matter-of-fact:
“I finished second. We’re here to win races, not be a boy band and love each other and play on the playground together,” Hocevar said.
The 22-year-old Hocevar had a reputation during his truck series days for losing his composure and retaliating. That waned last year when the Spire Motorsports driver earned NASCAR top-rookie honors in the Cup Series.
But his aggressive style has remained. It has earned praise from those in his camp and ridicule from competitors. And not necessarily for the fact that the moves are aggressive, but because of when he chooses to make those aggressive moves.
“Obviously, there’s learning lessons,” Hocevar said. “You don’t want to piss anybody off or frustrate anybody, and there’s things I would clean up for sure. But it’s going to come with learning that.”
Hocevar had made so many drivers angry, they were lined up after the race to talk to him after the race.
He had 2023 Cup champion Ryan Blaney upset with him, as well as his own iRacing mentor Ross Chastain, who co-owns the driver agency that includes Hocevar as one of its top clients.
Kyle Busch, a two-time Cup champion, was incredulous during the first stage of the race Sunday at Atlanta because of the way Hocevar was making aggressive moves to try to hold a position.
“I’m over him. … I’m going to wreck his a–,” Busch told his team over his in-car radio.
Blaney, who got turned by Hocevar in the final stage, vented to his team as well. Blaney felt that Hocevar tried to give him a shove (a move that drivers sometimes do to increase the speed of both cars) in an area where he couldn’t.
“He’s just a moron,” Blaney told his team. “He just runs right in the back of us. He has zero idea of where to bump somebody.”
Hocevar didn’t think that was a bad place, at least not initially.
“I was focused on defending middle more than hitting him,” Hocevar said. “I didn’t think it would offset him [into a spin]. I thought I could hit him pretty hard. That was the first time I probably lined up with Chevy nose with a Ford nose, and it just got him in a really bad spot.
“That’s 100 percent on me. … It sucks, the optics of it, for sure. It’s not fun to do that.”
Seeking his first Cup victory, Hocevar found himself racing among the leaders in the two-lap overtime finish. He was able to squeeze between Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell and appeared to have a shot to make the pass for the win when the caution came out, freezing the field with Bell in the lead.
Because the drivers had already received the white flag (signaling the final lap), Bell was declared the winner.
That last-lap move didn’t result in a wreck. He ran that overtime finish like a seasoned driver.
“He’s been around enough now that you know he’s going to be the aggressor,” Bell said. “If there’s a hole, he’s going to take it. If there’s not a hole, he’s going to make one.
“He ultimately gave me the shove to pass or break through to lead the side draft tandem with myself and Kyle down the back straightaway. Then I didn’t realize Kyle had opened up the bottom like he did getting into [Turn] 3 and allowed Carson to sneak middle of three-wide.”
To be fair, Hocevar wasn’t the only driver who had to answer for his moves. Drivers make mistakes in the name of aggression in virtually every race. Larson tried to block Austin Cindric late in the race, pinching Cindric into the wall and ending Cindric’s race.
Cindric had led 47 laps and ended up with a wrecked race car.
“[I was] just a little bit of a lazy kind of up the track,” Larson said. “[Cindric] got there a little bit quicker than I thought he would. … I’m sure that was my fault.”
No one is going to call Larson bad names for causing the wreck because he has earned respect as one of the sport’s greatest talents.
Hocevar, on the other hand, hasn’t earned that type of respect yet. And while he’s talented, there have been enough races in which he’s made questionable decisions, so he can’t shake the reputation of being an out-of-control racer.
Hocevar admits that he didn’t run the cleanest on Sunday.
“There’s some stuff I’ve got to learn and clean up a little bit,” he said. “But I feel like we put ourselves in the perfect opportunity to try and win a race. I’ve never had that opportunity really before, especially on a superspeedway.”
In the past, Hocevar would try to run at the rear of the field of the superspeedway events, employing a strategy of being far back enough that he could avoid accidents. That has occasionally worked but hasn’t guaranteed success.
Hocevar felt he had a car good enough Sunday at Atlanta that he didn’t need to race in the back. He wanted to race.
“I was racing from the drop of the rag,” Hocevar said. “I was in go, take every run and just get track position. And every time we lost it, we’d just get it right back.
“For me, I had to make up for riding [in the past] and I had to get all the experience I could and be super-aggressive and learn every move I could. … Again, there’s things I would clean up, but you’re not going to make the right decisions every time, especially with how fast we’re going and how many runs are happening, and I can only apologize and say I’m going to get better.”
The numbers say he got all he could (even if some of his competitors feel he got more than he should). He finished ninth in the first stage, seventh in the second stage and then second in the race.
“I’m normally 40th, waiting for them to crash and hoping they crash, and I finish in the teens,” Hocevar said. “So to be up front and get stage points both stages and have a shot to win is something to hold my head high real much.
“I’ve always said I’m a really bad superspeedway racer, so this at least gives me a little bit more confidence.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and IndyCar for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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