The most discussed driver through the 2026 Cup season has been Carson Hocevar. For all of his antics, right through the year, several drivers have spoken about the Spire No. 77 driver’s aggression on track as something that leads to making enemies. And for the whole season he has paid no heed to any advice.
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Hocevar already has no friends on the grid, and he says he’s here to win and not make friends. But he only has one win and several races where he didn’t win because of either his own aggressive moves or drivers around him not willing to help out. Dale Jr. believes that Hocevar will continue down the path he is on even if the veterans around the garage try to knock sense into his head.
“I just don’t know that the Denny Hamlins of this world, or whoever, is going to try to talk some sense into this guy,” said Dale Jr. on Dale Jr. Download. I don’t think they’re gonna get very far.”
But it’s not like the drivers around Hocevar are even making attempts to talk to him or explain where he’s going wrong. Bubba Wallace tried at Michigan after the Chevy driver had caused a 9-car wreck. But to no avail. And it’s unlikely that anyone wants to try.
Most drivers in the Cup series feel that Hocevar lacks respect for his fellow competitors. He’s shown it several times with his antics on social media and with the discounts he keeps announcing after a bust-up with drivers. After Brad Keselowski, it was a six percent discount for the No. 6 RFK Racing owner-driver. After Bristol, it was 12 percent for Team Penske’s No. 12 Ryan Blaney.
Dale Jr. believes that Hocevar can continue on the path that he is on because of the era he is driving in. The Hall of Famer outlines how, over time, the NASCAR garage has gotten to be a friendlier unit as opposed to the 80s. Junior said that the 80s were a time when on-track aggression continued race after race because drivers never spent much time together, so there wasn’t really space to address any brewing conflict.
Drivers began staying at tracks, settling disputes in the garage so conflicts didn’t carry into the next race.
“Hocevar would not be that wild of an anomaly if you threw him into the seventies or eighties,” said Dale Jr. “Now he’d get his a** kicked by a couple of these guys and they would, they’d get after him, but he sticks out like a sore thumb in this group of guys because everybody in this sport otherwise has a code that they all race by that’s really similar. And he doesn’t really go by that code. Not that his code is wrong. He doesn’t go by it. It’s different.”
“Chastain, for example, had a little bit of a different code as well,” Dale JR. added, “He’s sort of changed and polished his ways or, or, or cleaned up his act, however you want to say it. He’s not quite as much of a lightning rod anymore. He’s not going to be a j****** in a slow car. He’s smart enough. I think to not be a problem running 30th.”
But Ross Chastain isn’t the only example to compare here with Hocevar.
Hocevar spun out Blaney and didn’t give him anything while in the same race. Meanwhile, the race winner, Joey Logano, found himself in a similar situation in the race, but he opted for a winning approach.
Team Penske’s No. 22 Ford was charging down Joe Gibbs Racing’s Christopher Bell, who threw the same block that Blaney threw on Hocevar. Logano chose to brake and lose momentum for that little stretch but eventually got past Bell and everyone else to win.
Logano has the mentality of a champion, and he understands that there are times when making the move is not the right call. Logano also said that he didn’t want to make an enemy out of Christopher Bell. Both Logano and Bell are fighting for the championship, and neither wants a Chase race ruined by contact.
And Logano thinks that Hocevar needs to know when not to make the move because aggression, while entertaining, proves fatal when you’re trying to build a race and win it. It wasn’t just Logano; Denny Hamlin has said earlier in the season that you cannot disrespect drivers if you want to win races.
Hocevar learned this at Atlanta when a Toyota driver pushed Blaney past the finish line for the win. But as Dale Jr. said, it’s unlikely that anyone can knock sense into Hocevar’s head, and it’s currently even more unlikely that anyone makes the attempt.