After the Brickyard 400, Carson Hocevar reached a new high. The Spire Motorsports driver was fifth in the Cup Series standings, ahead of Hendrick Motorsports’ Chevrolet stars Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott as the manufacturer’s highest-ranked driver. But heading into the championship fight, Hocevar is no longer as confident that the No. 77 can stay there, and he has pointed directly at Chevrolet’s lack of speed as a reason why.

“Our cars aren’t the fastest. Our manufacturers aren’t the fastest. So it’s tough to say you’re gonna all of a sudden find speed in the last ten. You know, everybody kind of ramps up at the end. So for us, we’re just going to enjoy it, see where it stacks up, and maybe the other guys come back to us, or, you know, we put together really good strong races. But I think they’ll have to come to us rather than us go to them,” he told Kelly Crandall of Racer.com. 

Hocevar was asked why he had previously been unsure whether the team could make noise in the Chase. The timing of this question fits because Hocevar had looked much stronger only a few weeks earlier.

While the month of July was good for Hocevar, August was a rough patch for the eniter No. 77 group. Hocevar finished 31st at Iowa Speedway, 37th at Richmond Raceway, 19th at New Hampshire Motor Speedway and 38th at Daytona International Speedway. He had only one top-20 finish in those four races, with two DNFs. Daytona ended with contact involving Ryan Preece on Lap 155, leaving Hocevar 38th after 154 laps.

The points reset in the Chase softened that damage for him. Hocevar had been 354 points behind Denny Hamlin before Daytona. He began the Chase only 80 points behind the No. 1 seed. Still, the reset could not change what happened to his car during the final month of the regular season.

Chevrolet has given Carson Hocevar reasons to be realistic

There is evidence behind Hocevar’s blunt assessment of Chevrolet. Toyota dominated the regular season and won 14 of the first 26 races. Toyota also put six drivers into the 16-driver Chase field, whereas Chevrolet and Ford each had five.

Chevrolet’s situation is more complicated than being slow. The manufacturer entered 2026 with an updated Camaro ZL1 body, with changes to the hood, grille, and rocker panels. Teams had to learn how to extract performance from the revised package.

Even Hendrick Motorsports, Chevrolet’s biggest Cup operation, had an unusually difficult season. Through 24 races, Hendrick had 1,073 laps led compared with 2,328 at the same point in 2025.

Yet Chevrolet has not been incapable of winning. Daniel Suárez led all Chevy drivers with a 14.7 average finish during the regular season. He also won the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Chase Elliott added his own wins at Martinsville Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway, while Carson Hocevar supplied Spire’s breakthrough at Talladega Superspeedway. That makes Hocevar’s wording understandable.

The No. 77 is not entering the Chase without reasons for optimism. Hocevar finished fourth at Darlington in March after charging from the rear, while Talladega, where he scored his first Cup win, returns later in the postseason.

His team also has postseason experience. Crew chief Luke Lambert and competition director Matt McCall were part of Ryan Newman’s Richard Childress Racing team during the 2014 Chase. Newman finished runner-up to Kevin Harvick in the championship. That is one reason why Spire is approaching this postseason without treating the No. 12 seed as a verdict. Hocevar sees it in much the same way.

“I think our team morale-ish or motto is more so we’re playing with house money.”

It is going to be interesting to see how Hocevar bounces back after a lean patch. And people will be playing close attention on Chevy teams and how to perform compared to their inconsistent regular season run.