Days after the 2026 Daytona 500, Richard Petty shed light on how NASCAR no longer produces star drivers such as ‘The King’ (Petty) himself, or ‘The Intimidator’ (Dale Earnhardt). This lack of next-generation stardom synced with Joe Gibbs’ star driver’s recent admission, highlighting an identity crisis despite NASCAR’s countrywide popularity.

Christopher Bell’s unfortunate admission on identity crisis

Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell recently sat with The Athletic‘s Jeff Gluck, where he participated in the customary tradition of answering 12 questions about himself and NASCAR. In one of the questions, Gluck asked Bell about the “pettiest” thing that annoyed him.

“I get annoyed whenever race fans come up and ask for an autograph — and then follow it up with, “What’s your name?” or “Who are you?” That annoys me,” Bell said straightaway. “If they’re having you sign your own stuff, I enjoy that. But if it’s just generic checkered flags or something and they’re like, “Hey, sign this, sign this, sign this … what’s your name? Who are you?” It’s like, dude, why do you want my autograph? You don’t even know who I am.”

For a driver who spent nearly six years in the top tier of stock car racing, has 216 races under his belt, and drives for Joe Gibbs Racing, one of the top teams in the sport, having a bit of fame or identity can be expected. However, going by Bell’s admission, it was not so in most of the cases.

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This brings us to Richard Petty’s recent warning, where he shed light on how no drivers are able to reach the likes of Junior Johnson, Darrell Waltrip, Dale Earnhardt, or Jeff Gordon. Speaking to Forbes, Petty had said:

“Right now, we’re really hurting, looking for somebody to break out of the crowd. We have no fox for all of the dogs to chase. It’s a multitude of drivers racing against each other with no front-runner, nobody dominant, the first time in all of the transitions to different eras we have had this.”

Apparently, one cannot ignore Petty’s claim, as the likes of Kyle Larson, Joey Logano, or Ryan Blaney, all champion drivers of this generation, are hardly a match to Earnhardt or Gordon’s popularity. Although Kyle Busch or Denny Hamlin attract a few individual fans, it is still no match for the old generation drivers.

However, according to King Petty, there is one driver who can end this story.

When King Petty picked the next Intimidator

In a recent conversation with Dale Inman in the Richard Petty Family Racing podcast, Richard ‘the King’ Petty named the driver who he thinks resembles Dale Earnhardt, the Intimidator. Naming Carson Hocevar as the driver in question, Petty said:

“That boy in that 77, he has him in time. A lot of things he’s getting by with or doing are not really that wrong. If I go back and watch him run and stuff, he reminds me of Dale Earnhardt. Earnhardt learned to get by with that stuff. That boy in the 77, he’s just going to have to learn to get by with the things that he’s doing.”

With this, Petty and Inman discussed how Hocevar’s aggressiveness, old school grit, and risk-taking behavior reflect the young Dale Earnhardt. During his days, Earnhardt raced quite aggressively, something that is seen only in the Spire Motorsports driver lately, Petty reckoned.

However, whether he is the next Dale Earnhardt or not, Hocevar indeed made a name for himself already, as the NASCAR fraternity popularly knows him by “Hurricane Hocevar.”