Carson Hocevar finds himself the center of attention once again after another messy day at the race track.
With the NASCAR Cup Series at Darlington for the first race of the Chase on Saturday, Hocevar was competing for points that would hopefully push him up the points standings and further into championship contention. Instead, he left with more negative attention, and more frustrated competition.
As the first stage of the race was coming to a close, Hocevar drifted up the track and spun the No. 6 of Brad Keselowski. Watching the replay, it is extremely, extremely clear what happened. Hocevar simply gets into him.
After the race, in which Hocevar finished 11th, the No. 77 driver dismissed the contact he made with Keselowski.
“Yeah he spun,” he said smiling, when asked about the incident. “I don’t know what happened. He spun.”
Hocevar was immediately called out for his comments by NASCAR Hall of Famers Jeff Burton and Dale Jarrett, who were working the broadcast. Both were stunned by Hocevar’s lack of humility.
“It’s okay to make a mistake. Just [say], ‘I made a mistake.’ I don’t understand the ‘He just spun,’ thing,” Burton said. “At some point, the competitors are going to get sick of it.”
Brad Keselowski, No. 6 RFK Racing Ford; Carson Hocevar, No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet
Photo by: Meg Oliphant / Getty Images
Watching the replay back, Burton was only more confounded by how casually Hocevar shrugged off the move.
“Here it is. How is this anybody’s but Carson’s fault? I just don’t understand how we can look at it any other way. I just can’t understand the dismissal of it. It doesn’t make sense to me. You have to have more respect for your competitors. That’s baffling to me. ‘Well, he spun.’ That’s a champion. Brad Keslowski is a champion. You don’t just spin him around and dismiss him.”
Jarrett noted that if Hocevar hopes to contend for race wins and championships, you don’t do it by making enemies.
“You can’t just dismiss that. It’s going to come back on you. If he’s willing to take what comes back to you, then keep having at it. Go act the way that you want. That’s perfectly fine,” Jarrett said. “I can’t tell him how to go about trying to win races and win a championship, but I can assure you it’s not in a way where you make everybody mad, because you’re going to need some help. You’re going to need cooperation along the way.”
“They (Spire) don’t seem to care”
When the question was posed as to whether Spire Motorsports might get involved with Hocevar’s actions at some point, Burton said he seemed to think they were supporting his attitude.
“They don’t seem to care. They just don’t seem to care. They seem to be okay with it,” Burton said. “And maybe that’s right. I don’t know. He’s got a long-term contract. They believe in him. I’m not going to question Jeff Dickerson and ownership. You would think at some point they’d need to say ‘enough’s enough,’ but to this point publicly anyway, they don’t seem to care a whole lot.”
Indeed, it does not seem like Spire minds Hocevar being the lightning rod of attention that he is. In the days leading up to the race at Darlington, Spire shared a post on social media that was essentially gloating about the attention that Hocevar’s larger than life character has brought to the team.
Hocevar himself leaned into the villainy as well. Before he was asked about spinning Keselowski, he addressed his recent trend of qualifying poorly and having to battle his way through the field to secure a good finish.
“I do everything for TV and entertainment purposes though, based off everybody else,” Hocevar said. “I don’t know, whatever makes just good TV. I just do it for the clicks. You know what I mean?”
At this point, Hocevar seems kind of split between two states of potential character. According to the Hocevar that said, “I do everything for TV and entertainment purposes though, based off everybody else,” his image is the product of his portrayal in the media, rather than his own actions. But as the Hocevar that refused to admit to his mistake in spinning Keselowski proves, much of that image comes straight from his own words and actions.
After the race, Keselowski promised that, “His day’s coming and it’s coming hard. Watch out, Carson.”
We’ll see what happens between the two sides next week in Illinois.
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