NASCAR made its whole identity on grudges: Drivers wrecking each other, holding grudges for years and refusing to play nice on pit road. So when TV started pushing a cuddly best-friend storyline about two of the sport’s brightest young stars, somebody was eventually going to snap. That somebody was Carson Hocevar.

“I wish every TV person would stop saying Jesse Love and Connor Zilisch are the best of friends,” Hocevar said. “They can be friends, but every interview is like, ‘What’s it like racing your best friend?’ That’s not doing anything to help the sport.”

But there’s also a backstory behind the duo’s camaraderie. Zilisch and Love reportedly met years ago at the Trackhouse Motorplex. Zilisch, even though he was younger, was the one coaching Love through Toyota’s development program. The latter wasn’t thrilled about taking pointers from a kid younger than him. However, the dissatisfaction didn’t last long when Love watched the “kid” drive. 

And after that, they just clicked. With similar taste in music, the same sense of humor, and the same competitive streak, their friendship stuck as they climbed the ladder together. Then came 2025, and it got complicated fast. Zilisch tore through the season with 10 wins for JR Motorsports. 

Love ground out consistency for Richard Childress Racing. They even shared an Airbnb during championship week. But while Love took the title, Zilisch went back to that same Airbnb in tears as the runner-up.

What’s more, Love spun Zilisch out at Talladega’s Xfinity race in December last year while chasing a win, but then sprinted to the infield care center to make sure he was okay. This year at Watkins Glen, Zilisch leaned on Love hard enough into the final corner to force a mistake, then snuck by to win by a quarter of a second. Evidently, the drama is real, and so is Hocevar’s gripe with it. 

“All it’s doing is feeding the stereotype that all the drivers are too close, too friendly, and aren’t going to race each other hard,” the Spire Motorsports driver said.

But if you ask Zilisch, a little friendship never hurts.

“It’s easy to blend the two together, your outside friend life and your racing job, almost, and it’s easy to forget that we are different people when we put our helmets on,” the racer said in September last year, per NASCAR. “But thankfully, I’ve got a great friend group that we can go out and compete and be fierce competitors on the race track, and then come off the track and not treat each other how we do on the race track and be friendly.

“And it’s a hard balance because you don’t want to wreck your friend, you don’t want to have incidents with friends of yours, but you just kind of have to expect it if you’re going to race around each other. And if you’re going to kind of be friends, you have to understand that on the other side of it, you’re gonna have to race against each other, too. And some things could happen.”

In fact, the friendship has only led to more competitiveness between the two.

“I don’t like losing to him,” Love said. “I’ve woken up every day trying to beat him, probably more than myself.”

Well, whether Carson Hocevar likes it or not, this dynamic actually gives NASCAR rivalries a modern twist.