Carson Hocevar won Sunday’s (April 26) Jack Link’s 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, getting a race-winning shove from Alex Bowman and holding off Chris Buescher to score his first career NASCAR Cup Series win.
In his 91st career Cup start, the 23-year-old who’s experienced his share of tough luck at racing’s top level saw the bad breaks go to everyone else in the Jack Link’s 500. After a big wreck involving 26 cars reset the field, Hocevar found his footing with track position in the race’s final stage and kept the field at bay during the closing laps.
Hocevar battled door-to-door with Buescher down the stretch, charging ahead of the No. 17 Ford on the white flag lap. He then had a big enough push from Bowman in the race’s closing seconds to hold on and earn a monumental victory, the first for his Spire Motorsports organization since Justin Haley won a rain-shortened Daytona race in 2019.
Hocevar then put together an impressive post-race display, controlling the car with his feet while hanging outside of it. The No. 77 Chili’s car was paraded in front of tens of thousands of cheering Talladega fans, its driver waving and cheering before crashing the car into the outside wall by the start/finish line.
It’s safe to say that one of the sport’s talented young prospects started a new victory lane tradition NASCAR hasn’t seen before.
“I’ve had this thought up for a while,” Hocevar told FOX Sports post-race before getting a little emotional about family. “I hope my grandpa’s watching. My grandma died last year, so I’m glad I’m finally able to get my grandpa a trophy.”
Buescher, Bowman, Chase Elliott, Zane Smith, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ross Chastain, Austin Cindric, Noah Gragson and Kyle Busch completed the top 10 in second through 10th, respectively.
Buescher lost a good pusher in Erik Jones when Jones spun with seven laps to go. But the RFK Racing Ford, surrounded by a mountain of Chevys, was able to hold on for second place.
“Really proud of everybody,” Buescher said. “That was a fun race all the way there at the end … I felt really good where we were at coming off turn 4. Felt like we were in a spot to take this Ford Mustang into victory lane. I’d say we probably needed Jones behind us. He was really strong, was giving us excellent runs. When we lost him, it was a little lonely up there, yeah.”
Buescher was one of a handful of drivers who emerged unscathed following a huge crash on lap 115. The Big One, as they say at these drafting tracks, left only Buescher, Chastain, Ryan Preece (the first stage winner) and Christopher Bell initially sneaking through. It occurred when Chastain turned leader Bubba Wallace at the front of the field, leaving the pack with nowhere to go but directly into the eye of The Big One.
Twenty cars remained on the lead lap after the crash, and the sprint to the stage saw Chastain edge out Bell, Buescher and Stenhouse at the line to win stage two. But pit stops rearranged some track position, leaving Hocevar near the front and in position to capitalize with a smaller field and cars struggling to pass in the draft.
The inertia inside the pack led to no three-wide racing at the finish, an inability to move forward highlighted by several drivers after the race. NASCAR made a change to lengthen stage one, limiting fuel save for the final 45 laps but the pack was unable to race more aggressively.
“I saved as much fuel as I ever have,” Bowman said after the race, “And could have very easily taken a nap at a couple of points… it’s tough. I don’t know if there’s a complete fix.”
“Not a lot of passes for excitement,” Gragson added due to the way the Next Gen car runs in the draft. As Kyle Busch put it succinctly: “It is what it is.”
Other contenders had long fell by the wayside due to pit road problems in stage one. Hamlin, Briscoe, Smith, Daniel Dye and Chad Finchum were all penalized during the first green-flag pit cycle, while Cindric was unable to get to his pit box and had to come down pit road again. It took until the latter portions of the final stage for both Hamlin and Cindric to get their laps back; neither one factored into the battle for the win.
Hocevar wound up leading 19 laps, including retaking the lead on the final one for a 0.114-second margin ahead for his first Cup triumph and second overall for Spire. He joins a long list of drivers who get their first win at this 2.66-mile facility: Brad Keselowski (2009), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (2017) and Bubba Wallace (2021), to name a few.
Cup Results from Talladega
The Cup Series races next at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday, May 3. Television coverage will be provided by FOX Sports 1 beginning at 3:30 p.m. ET.
A member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Samuel also covers NASCAR for Yardbarker, Field Level Media, and Heavy Sports. He will attend the University of Arkansas in the fall of 2025.