Carson Hocevar never had many friends on the grid. He’s said, in fact, that he’s not in NASCAR to make any. But what he is making is enemies, and after the Southern 500 on Sunday, where Hocevar seemingly spun him out of the race, RFK Racing driver Brad Keselowski has joined that list.
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Keselowski issued a warning to Hocevar after their contact in Darlington: “His day’s coming. It’s coming hard. Watch out, Carson.” Most of the garage seemed to be on Keselowski’s side, as well, including Denny Hamlin. But Hocevar has found a backer in former Hendrick Motorsports Crew Chief Steve Letarte.
“There is no hole in this direction (outside lane),” said Letarte on Inside the Race. “You cannot slide up in front of the 6. So your option is to stay out of the gas, use a little bit more brake, but you don’t have the real estate. Instead, he rolls up the racetrack, and I think he’s okay with this contact(first touch). Boom, he hits him.”
At this point(after the first contact), I think he’s just trying to plug the 6 into the wall, and he’s thinking, I’m gonna turn left. I’m gonna go this direction(inside line), I’m gonna clear this guy, I’m gonna run away from the six, gets into the fence as expected. But then he spins. And at this point you just gas up because you’ve wrecked him; you might as well just spin him out completely after the race.”
It all went down on lap 107 going into turn 4 when Hocevar in the Spire 77 Chevrolet was chasing down Keselowski in the RFK 6 Ford. Hocevar was on two-lap-fresher tires after both drivers ran longer than the leaders. Hocevar made several attempts but couldn’t find the space to get past Keselowski and ended up nudging the rear left of the Ford before a bit more contact sent Keselowski spinning.
Hocevar, after the race, was asked about the incident, and he didn’t explain himself the way Letarte defended him. His response was dismissive. “Yeah, he spun. I don’t know what happened. He spun.”
And that’s what irked the majority of the NASCAR community. Jeff Burton claimed that Hocevar behaving that way with a former Cup Series champion was simply not done.
Letarte, however, feels that Hocevar’s response, from the driver’s POV, was justified. In the past, drivers have been fined for admitting their intent to make contact. Just this past year in Texas, Ryan Preece was fined $50,000 and docked 25 points after wrecking Ty Gibbs and admitting that he wanted to make the contact. If Hocevar did it intentionally, as many are claiming he did, appearing clueless was the right way to handle it.
While Letarte backed Hocevar, Hamlin didn’t. The Joe Gibbs Racing driver said on his Actions Detrimental podcast that he wouldn’t speak directly about Hocevar, but he would address Spire Motorsports instead. He explained that he didn’t want to give Hocevar the clip he was looking for.
“There are no adults in the room, clearly, in that building,” said Hamlin. “No adults. That’s my opinion. Because how can you honestly think that that’s what’s best for your company? If you’re running a serious organization, I think they’re unserious. Anything else? That’s it. That’s all I got.”
Keselowski isn’t the first driver to be upset with Hocevar’s on-track antics. There are several others who have been vocal about their differences with Hocevar.
It was Zane Smith who ended up taking himself out in Chicagoland while attempting to take out Hocevar in a manner of payback for an incident in Iowa in 2025. Both drivers were called into the NASCAR Hauler and asked to put their rivalry to an end.
And then even more recently. It was Corey Heim in Indianapolis who held up Hocevar for a significant amount of time while the Spire driver was on fresher tires. As Heim pulled off onto pit road, Hocevar flipped him the bird. While Heim said that he doesn’t think it’s a rivalry, it’s unlikely that this is the last we hear of Heim vs. Hocevar.
But after being a pain to multiple drivers on the grid, Hocevar is boxing himself into a corner. He is currently 12th, 89 points behind the championship leader Hamlin, and if he were to get a win and a string of top-ten finishes, the points can still be made up. What cannot be made up is not happening: someone to give you a push across the finish line, something we saw in Atlanta when Ryan Blaney got a push from Toyota cars while no one pushed Hocevar.
If Keselowski is true to his word, then Hocevar will need to watch out for him either while fighting for position or while trying to lap him because the 2012 Cup Series winner doesn’t have anything to lose and can afford to DNF if that means Hocevar’s race is ruined.