If you’re like me, you hollered when you saw fists flying between Carson Hocevar and Ryan Blaney after last weekend’s night race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Whether you like Hocevar or hate him, you must admit it was a defining “hell yeah” moment, as some in the industry have called it, and it defined what NASCAR racing culture is about.
Drivers like Hocevar are nothing new. They have appeared a number of times in the past, and while you may have hated them in the moment, at some point in time they are eventually remembered fondly by fans.
But a word of caution to you, my reader: his aggression and the drama it produces are only a fleeting sight.
Ahead of the NASCAR Cup Series’ arrival at Kansas Speedway this weekend, I saw the usual promotional social media posts from NASCAR and its affiliate accounts featuring highlights from past Kansas races.
Then I came across one in particular that I found poetically fitting.
In 2023, Noah Gragson and Ross Chastain had a brief run-in with each other during that year’s spring Kansas race. Afterward, Gragson confronted Chastain on pit road, and the two came to blows, with Chastain throwing the first punch.
Seems pretty damn familiar, doesn’t it?
That’s especially true considering Chastain’s reputation at the time. The Trackhouse Racing driver had earned a black hat reputation on the track for reckless moves and aggressive driving that ended with some of his fellow Cup drivers wrecked and furious, vowing revenge. At times, it felt like incidents like this were occurring on a weekly basis, with a new crosshair covering the No. 1 Chevrolet every week. In fact, the criticism occurred so often, it sparked its own meme on social media.
Many fans loved it, many drivers didn’t.
That included the experienced veteran drivers in the Cup garage who warned Chastain that he couldn’t continue throwing caution to the wind as he did. Perhaps the most outspoken among the Cup elders was Denny Hamlin, who faced the negative end of Chastain’s driving on more than one occasion and criticized his style in several instances.
Yet despite all of the heavy criticism, verbal threats, physical altercations such as the aforementioned one with Gragson, and even after Hamlin himself retaliated at Phoenix Raceway in March of that year, Chastain still didn’t back down. It looked like that crazy Floridian watermelon farmer was here to stay for a long time.
Until he wrecked the wrong guy.
The very next weekend after his fisticuffs with Gragson, Chastain ran into Kyle Larson while racing him for the lead at Darlington Raceway following a late-race restart, putting them both into the wall and ruining their race. It was par for the course among the headlines, and it seemed like just another drop in the bucket of Chastain drama.
Larson’s Hendrick Motorsports teammate, William Byron, won that Darlington race, but when his team owner, Rick Hendrick, joined him for the post-race winner’s press conference, no one could help but ask him about the incident with Chastain, and he obliged.
“Well, I don’t know if Chevrolet can cool it down,” Hendrick said that day. “It’s really getting old with these guys. I don’t care if he’s driving a Chevrolet, if he wrecks our cars. I don’t care, and I told Chevrolet that. I’m loyal to Chevrolet, but when somebody runs over us, then I expect my guys to hold their ground. I’m not going to ask them to yield just because of Chevrolet. … I would think Justin [Marks, Trackhouse team owner] would have a conversation.
“If you wreck us, you’re going to get it back.”
It didn’t sound like anything anyone hadn’t heard before when speaking negatively about Chastain. Really, few expected it to change Chastain’s driving style, since Trackhouse owner Marks had been nothing but supportive of his driver up to that point.
However, one day later, Marks spoke on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio with a very different viewpoint.
“We’ve had many conversations with many people [the Monday after Darlington],” Marks relayed. “Some difficult conversations. I think the important message here is that we are a believer in Ross’ talents. That’s obvious. He’s very fast. But he’s got some things he’s got to clean up, I’ll just be totally honest with you. We today started the process of more aggressively handling that — with our partners, with Ross and with our team.”
After that, crickets from Chastain. Barring a couple of apologized-for incidents, the Trackhouse driver hasn’t been anywhere near as excitingly reckless since. It isn’t confirmed who the people Marks spoke with that Monday after Darlington were, but whoever they were, it was enough to make Marks change his tune about his driver overnight.
Fast forward to Bristol, and I can’t help but feel some déjà vu. Hocevar isn’t going down the exact path Chastain was, being a little more outgoing and unreserved when speaking to media and fans, but on the track it’s like seeing double vision.
When you look at the teams Hocevar has had issues with, almost all of them are Toyota or Ford drivers, and zero are from the Chevrolet-backed Hendrick, a team that Spire Motorsports depends on.
For now, Hocevar will remain the bad guy you love or hate, just like Chastain was. But for all of that to change, he would have to run into the wrong driver, which would warrant a stern phone call to Spire owner Jeff Dickerson, who, like Marks with Chastain, has been adamantly defending his driver against even the most experienced voices.
And that will be a shame. Because this past week of seeing Blaney and Hocevar coming to blows and no penalty being designated as a result has really instilled a sense of nostalgia in me from when NASCAR was a self-policing sport that the drivers could settle themselves. That was before NASCAR felt the need to step in and hand out a fine or dock points and resolve any kind of rivalry situation before it got entertaining.
You may not like him, and that’s OK. Many didn’t like Chastain, either. Much like how they didn’t like Kyle Busch or even Dale Earnhardt when they raised hell every week.
But you sure as hell miss them now, and when the day comes after Hocevar wrecks the wrong car, you’ll miss him, too.
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loud column, co-host of the Frontstretch Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT
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