Did You Notice? … Carson Hocevar drew the ire of seemingly every NASCAR Cup Series competitor in the race Sunday (Feb. 23) at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet driver blocked and bullied his way through the field, utilizing bumper-to-bumper contact or daring, aggressive behavior inside the draft.
“He’s just a moron,” Ryan Blaney said on the radio shortly after a bad bump from Hocevar sent him spinning. “He runs right in the back of you. Just zero idea … zero idea the whole race.”
Blaney later expanded on his comments, claiming Hocevar’s “overaggressiveness gets him in a lot of trouble.”
“He’s done some things I haven’t been a fan of, like hooking guys and wrecking guys on purpose,” Blaney said. “I wouldn’t say that’s just being young. That’s just not being smart. … I think he’s a little overaggressive at times.
“… We’ll see if he’ll learn. If not, someone will teach him.”
It’s the latest in a long line of people upset at Hocevar, from Daniel Hemric and Harrison Burton at Martinsville Speedway last fall to perhaps the Cup sophomore’s most notorious incident: contact with Corey Heim while racing for the 2023 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship.
“I’ve been racing Carson for a long time, racing him since I was eight or nine years old, and it’s just kind of what he does,” Heim said back then. “He’ll wreck you and apologize, and then he’ll do it again the next week. So it’s not going to be the last time he does it, and it’s certainly not the first time he’s done it. … It is what it is, I completely expected it. I literally saw it coming.”
It’s a trend not lost on Ross Chastain, who himself was once the sport’s take-no-prisoners driver everyone loved to hate. Chastain tried to spend time talking with Hocevar after the race, only to leave the conversation frustrated.
But it’s also worth looking at how this race played out. For all those flexing their muscle, saying Hocevar needs to get taught a lesson, he finished that race in second. It was Blaney who was sitting fourth and Chastain eighth when the caution came out that ended it.
If it didn’t? Hocevar had a good shot to win, hitting turn 3 with a shot of momentum while chaos broke out behind him.
Chastain also knows a thing or two about what it’s like to be a pariah. He spent much of 2022 and ’23 as the center of attention, blamed for wrecking everyone from Denny Hamlin to Chase Elliott to Kyle Larson. But his take-no-prisoner, do-it-his-way style also skyrocketed his popularity and success, finishing runner-up in the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series title race while putting himself in the NASCAR history books with a Mario-Kart-level move to make the Championship 4 at Martinsville Speedway.
Chastain’s stats during that 49-race stretch, from 2022 to May of ’23, were impressive: two wins, 20 top-five finishes and over 1,000 laps led. But then, he wrecked Larson at Darlington Raceway in May, and it was suddenly a bridge too far.
Owner Rick Hendrick came out and said this type of aggressive driving was over the line, that someone at a higher level needed to speak out and stop it. Suddenly, it felt like Chastain was being told to knock it off in private, explicitly, and he hasn’t been the same since: three wins, but only 11 top fives while flat out missing the postseason in 2024.
It’s a catch-22 for the sport these days, isn’t it. The type of driving style Chastain had, the one Hocevar clings to, is less accepted by their peers than ever before. But I seem to remember a guy named Dale Earnhardt who had that same type of “run you over for the win at all costs” type of aggression.
“What he calls aggressive, we call rough,” Geoff Bodine told the Washington Post about Earnhardt in 1987, when he won 11 races and the championship by seemingly 5,000 points. “He thinks the object is to win at any cost.”
“[Earnhardt’s] got his style — a bull in a china closet,” Bill Elliott said in that same story. “My feeling is, I’m here to win a race, but it isn’t everything. I won’t shove a man out of the way to do it.”
So be it. But what did Earnhardt do with his bump-at-all-costs philosophy? He went on to gather sponsors, support and the love of the fan base in winning seven championships, 76 races and a forever spot as one of the sport’s greatest drivers. Doing it his own way, with a unique personality to boot, earned him the loyalty of a NASCAR generation.
Now? You wonder if anyone is willing to tolerate an Earnhardt style of driving. I’m not arguing what Hocevar is doing is always right or in the same stratosphere; the Heim incident, in particular, felt like a line crossed. But he’s also one of the most unique people in a sport that needs them with room to grow, especially with Gen-Z. Just last week, he’s a driver who hopped online during the Daytona 500 rain delay to do iRacing with anyone that was sitting at home bored.
hey, i am gonna go live on twitch on iracing if you’re bored.https://t.co/pUykuvmS80 pic.twitter.com/IGkp3iBCIi
— Carson Hocevar (@CarsonHocevar) February 16, 2025
How many rookies, from Jeff Gordon to Tony Stewart to Joey Logano, have gotten ahead because they ticked people off? To be the best, boundaries were stretched. The key to success wasn’t always to stay in line and race like everybody else.
It’s clear with Hocevar, the same potential is there; there’s a sense of individualism and generational talent that could be harnessed if handled right. The hope is that by “teaching him a lesson,” some behind-the-scenes talk doesn’t lead to the personality — or ability to, gasp, make contact with people every once in a while — getting turned off.
Did You Notice? … Through two NASCAR Cup races, Michael McDowell is the only driver who hasn’t been involved in any on-track incident? That’s how much these big wrecks at drafting tracks can eat up racecars and spit them out.
The total through 900-plus miles is staggering: 22 DNFs, 19 cautions, one flip and probably millions in sheet-metal damage. How McDowell avoided the carnage at Atlanta may have been more coincidence than anything else: he spent six laps behind the wall to fix a power-steering problem and spent much of the middle part of the race racing at the rear of the pack.
But McDowell also stands out for a different reason: a loophole in NASCAR rules allowed him to earn all six of those laps back. Caution after caution in the second stage, with no one else one lap down or more, caused McDowell to gain the free pass six times, tying a NASCAR record. In the course of just 102 laps, he was back on the same lap as the leaders and actually had a shot to win the race, flirting with the top 10 before ultimately winding up in 13th place.
Could you imagine if McDowell won somehow? After spending time inside the garage? It would make the recent uproar over the playoff system and when to throw the caution seem like child’s play. It’s a problem with an easy solution too: if you spend time inside the garage, for any reason, you are no longer eligible for the free pass and need to make up all your laps the hard way.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen this anomaly happen. Kyle Busch once earned five laps back at Watkins Glen International in 2006, recovering from a stint in the garage, and finished the race in ninth place. Eighteen-plus years in between makes it an unlikely event but, as we’ve seen with crashes, the second you don’t think it’ll happen at place x on the track, they spin out there. The sport shouldn’t play around, especially when there’s an easy fix to this rule going forward.
Did You Notice? … Quick hits before taking off …
- We’re only two races in, but if the season ended now, all four Hendrick Motorsports Chevys and all three Team Penske Fords would make the playoffs with ease. The biggest ripple so far is at Toyota, where 23XI Racing is in strong position with Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace while Joe Gibbs Racing is reeling from Chase Briscoe’s penalty and Ty Gibbs’ slow start.
- Just 32 trucks were on the entry list for Atlanta, and multiple sources tell me that number could dwindle into the 20s as we head to Las Vegas Motor Speedway in the coming weeks. It’s an alarming drop-off from a series that’s seen independent teams wither away while manufacturer support consolidates around one to two superteams apiece. But don’t expect NASCAR to step in and fix it either. Recent rumors of Dodge returning in 2026 should come with the type of cash infusion, you would think, that adds the additional six-seven trucks back on the grid this series needs. There’s just going to be a little short-term pain until it happens, with short fields expected perhaps all the way until Rockingham Speedway Easter Weekend.
Follow Tom Bowles at @NASCARBowles
The author of Did You Notice? (Wednesdays) Tom spends his time overseeing Frontstretch’s 40+ staff members as its majority owner and Editor-in-Chief. Based outside Philadelphia, Bowles is a two-time Emmy winner in NASCAR television and has worked in racing production with FOX, TNT, and ESPN while appearing on-air for SIRIUS XM Radio and FOX Sports 1's former show, the Crowd Goes Wild. He most recently consulted with SRX Racing, helping manage cutting-edge technology and graphics that appeared on their CBS broadcasts during 2021 and 2022.
You can find Tom’s writing here, at CBSSports.com and Athlonsports.com, where he’s been an editorial consultant for the annual racing magazine for 15 years.