There is no driver on the NASCAR grid who splits opinions as much as Hocevar. Much of the talk around Hocevar has been his aggressive driving style, which was highly praised as entertaining at the start of the season. That same praise has now turned into criticism because drivers and analysts alike feel that it’s getting too much.
While Hocevar is drawing criticism, the same has also fallen on his team from several quarters. Kevin Harvick elaborated on his Happy Hours Podcast why he believes Spire Motorsports is not getting it right with their No. 77 Chevrolet driver.
“Let’s get something straight – your owners are doing a bad job too because they’re encouraging it,” said Harvick. “In the end, a good owner is gonna sit him down and explain the game to him and make him understand that ‘I want you to be you, but at some point you got to take responsibility for all the shit that you’re tearing up for everybody else.’ You have to be able to put that in perspective for your driver.”
“You can’t just send them off and say, ‘Oh man, everybody loves it. Keep going, keep going.’ I’ve fallen into that trap because everybody’s like, ‘Man, that was awesome. Keep doing that. Man you’re really mixing it up.’ But if you want to be a champion of this sport, you can’t do it that way. You can still have a great personality, and you can still have great clips, and you can still sell a lot of T-shirts. But it won’t work.”
Harvick’s comments came after JGR’s Denny Hamlin, on his own podcast earlier in the week, said that he would not speak about Hocevar at all because he doesn’t want to give Hocevar the clicp he’s looking for. Instead, Hamlin was critical of Spire not being able to keep their driver in check and said that there were no adults in the room at Spire.
Hocevar himself responded to Hamlin’s comment through a post on Facebook.
“So many people are gonna discredit you for being a fan of us. They’re gonna call you dumb, fake fans, and worse. NASCAR doesn’t have to be that serious. We race for the fans. Even the ones that hate us. Regardless if we’re an unserious organization,” read the post.
While Hocevar is making it clear that he will not be listening to any of the criticism, others around NASCAR are making it clear exactly what he’s trying to achieve.
On the Happy Hour’s podcast, Mamba Smith brought up the topic of Hocevar’s latest range of T-shirts, saying that Hocevar’s going to keep selling them but that won’t count for anything if he cannot win the championship.
“It’s a lot of work, and sometimes when it’s that much work, it takes your focus off of what you should be doing. And that’s winning races,” said Harvick about Hocevar’s side business.
The shirt in this context is the newest one that Hocevar has launched, which read, “Got my Belts Tight,” which is what he said to a reporter who asked him what he thought about Brad Keselowski’s threats.
Lap 107 in Darlington is where all of this started, the lap on which Hocevar spun out the RFK Racing owner-driver’s No. 6 Ford. Keselowski was left extremely frustrated when the Spire driver nudged him out of the way, sending the No. 6 RFK Ford spinning.
Keselowski said after the race in Darlington, “His day’s coming. It’s coming hard. Watch out, Carson.”
Following the race in Darlington, Hocevar reshared an X post by RFK Racing in which the team put up a picture of Hocevar with several phrases written around him and used it to notify fans of the caution that was caused by Hocevar spinning out their owner.
Hocevar reshared it along with his shop link and announced that there would be an additional six per cent off for six hours, an easy-to-spot dig at Brad Keselowski’s car number.
If Keselowski was to pay it forward and follow up on his threats, there are two things to watch out for: firstly, if Hocevar’s attitude changes after feeling the impact of his Chase being ruined by a driver he refused to give respect to. Secondly, what kind of penalty does the RFK owner-driver get for calling his shot and following through?