NASCAR CUP SERIES
POCONO RACEWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES
JUNE 21, 2025
Carson Hocevar, driver of the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying session at Pocono Raceway.
Media Availability Quotes:
This is now the seventh time you guys have seen this left-rear tire package. You guys made some growth at Texas, starting up in front and had the great run, as well, at Nashville. Has there been any difficulty for you kind of adapting to it? And also this week as well, a different right side than you guys saw at Indy last year. So how different do you expect this race to be as compared to your first or last year?
“Yeah, I’m not really sure how different it’s going to be. But, you know, we’ve had our, I don’t know, best races on this left-side tire. So, you know, Texas and Charlotte, I think has it… Nashville, Michigan, kind of all those places. Yeah, we’ve been really fast, so hopefully they don’t change it anytime soon so that we can keep taking advantage of it.
I thought this race was pretty good last year or puts on a decent show, so hopefully it’s not too different. But if it’s going to be, you know, it’s for the positive side of it.”
Any conversations with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. this week or this weekend?
“No, unfortunately. I’m not sure what I could what I would say, right? You know, there’s nothing that really would change it, right? We’ve already had that conversation.
I feel like we have a good relationship or, you know, had one. I was just running behind him, just kind of logging laps and, you know, just locked up in a very dumb spot. And it was just so dumb, really. Just a mistake that didn’t need to happen and didn’t want it to happen. But there’s nothing that I could do or say. You know, I can’t buy him a Hallmark card and, you know, really make things better. So, it sucks. It sucks for me because he’s the only NASCAR driver that owns a sprint car team, and I love sprint cars. So it sucks because I want to go talk to him about sprint cars. So, yeah, hopefully everything can be set, but I know that the scorecard has me ahead right now, unfortunately.”
There’s been a lot of conversation about you, about stuff outside the racetrack, whether it’s the incidents that happened on the racetrack that you carried off or your comments that you made on Twitch. From your perspective, is it getting to a point where it feels like those around you are kind of getting frustrated a little bit, like — hey, let’s just try to focus on what we’re doing instead of the extracurricular stuff?
“Well, I mean, there’s two ways to look at it. Number one, you know, I think everybody in my inner circle wants the best for me and our group. Number two, I feel like I put myself out there a lot more, right? The issue wasn’t for the team having their kind of frustrations that I’m giving my opinion and putting it out there. It’s just the fact that, you know, my opinion wasn’t my opinion. It was just based off everything else, you know, that I’ve heard or seen, right? I didn’t go do my own homework and voice my own opinion. You know, I didn’t give it a shot. I didn’t give it a chance. I didn’t go walk around. I didn’t go see it. When I did, you know, then hindsight’s 20/20, then I have my own opinion. But I’ve already put it out there. So I think that was the biggest thing was like — I wasn’t doing what I pride myself of doing. I was just having my own opinion, putting it out there and being me. You know, I just didn’t give it a fair shot, so I think that’s where it all stems from.”
Your name’s been out there for a couple of weeks in a row now… some good, like Michigan, despite the result, then obviously the Nashville and Mexico City stuff now. How do you put that behind you and keep your perspective and focus on the job at hand when you have to get behind the wheel?
“Yeah, I mean, number one, we’re here at a race track, so we just go racing, right? So, you know, I mean, the scorecard has it that I I’m getting something from the 47 at some point, right? And I think my team and everybody kind of knows that. But at the same time, it’s ideally just the 47, right? It’s not an open hunting season on the 77 because of these incidents. You know, it’s kind of oscillated to, you know, when the 47 has a moment that he wants to take at us or take a shot. It’s just like — OK, you know, that’s probably fair. But with everybody else, my team has reassured me that this isn’t open hunting season. We are going to race like we’ve raced, let’s just not create more enemies that we start getting shots back at us. But, you know, we’re still just going to go race, be aggressive and defend ourselves when we need to. But this is kind of, unfortunately, now a ‘two to nothing’ scorecard. I’ve been a fan of the sport for a long time. You know the game; you’ve seen it and everything. But we just go race.”
When you talk about the scorecard with the No. 47, does that mean if he does something in a race, that’s part of it and that’s, I don’t know if the word is ‘acceptable’ in this situation…
“Well, I’m hoping — I mean, we’re really fast here, so I’m hoping he’s artistic about it that I don’t hit anything. But yeah, I mean, just ultimately — like it could be tomorrow or it could be six months from now, right? It would be very hypocritical for me to then lose my mind and be frustrated. I’ve been a fan for a very long time. You’ve seen these stories before. It’s not, by no means, the first time. So, hopefully, for my sake, it doesn’t happen and we can race, and if I need to, you know, we can point it by whatever. But I know how frustrated I was that I brought this back up because I thought we were good. And I let him go because I was a lap down or whatever, and I was just riding behind him and then I locked up. You live in the world you make for yourself, and this is the world I’ve made.”
You reference that just you live in the world that you make. In the last year, you’ve had some great finishes and performances, but you’ve also drew $100,000 in fines for separate incidents, upset some drivers, which, you know, in some cases, that’s not always a bad thing… I understand that. How do you look at what you need to do moving forward to be, whether it’s a better you or a better driver, or if you feel like, hey, I’m doing the right things and I’m just kind of being misunderstood in some situations?
“Well, I mean, I think there’s a bigger thing or maybe the perception that, you know, you make these mistakes, and for me, like that I don’t care… like, I’m just like, oh, cool. You know, whatever. You know, what’s a fine or what’s this or what’s this? You know, I’ll never get anything back. It’s good. But I’m very hard on myself. When I qualified second, I’m just cussing myself out, basically. So when I do something really dumb or hit somebody, right, like, people just don’t see that because you just go to your hotel room and bang your head against the wall, basically. But, you know, just because I do something in the heat of the moment or maybe, you know, you do it two or three times, doesn’t mean I’m not hard on myself for those mistakes because they are mistakes. You know, it’s just trying not to make that a pattern. But when you’re constantly making aggressive moves like we’re doing, it’s balancing that fine line of, you know, you make a thousand moves a day. Just unfortunately, what people remember isn’t always the good ones. You always remember the negative ones. So that’s just trying to limit the negative ones a lot more.”
Do you feel like you’ve created a pattern for the garage or (inaudible)…
“I already have that image, right? Like it’ll never go away. I could go three years from now and it’s just like – oh, I’m back, per se. I think I’ve already made that image before I got in this garage, and I think it’s just trying to balance one thing of owning it and trying to change the narrative while still being like, yeah, I get it. Like I’m aware of this and knowing that.”
I hate to bring up another sore subject, but have you taken a look at the replay from the restart in yesterday’s truck race? What were your initial reactions, and what are your reactions now?
“Yeah… I mean, I looked at it, for sure. We all did. I know my team was on it. We were all on it. You know, obviously, I think we all — this instance kind of came up at the brickyard, right? We were in the race and studied it, so we instantly knew the No. 34 is the control car. I’m not sure he knew that or their team knew that, so it started slowing the field down a lot. I wish I just at least waited to the second line. But with me starting to get pushed and having Michigan truck restarts in my head, I just decided to go and see what they would have called considering the pace was a lot slower, and they called us. So, you know, I felt like I did the best to try to at least give ourselves a fighting shot, where if I kept backing the field down because he was kind of waiting on me to go, that we probably would have gotten spun anyways and the race is over. So, you know, I tried, what I thought in the moment, was try to keep our truck rolling and fight for another lap, and we just never got a yellow.”
Is there something that can be done to fix that confusion as to who the control truck is in the future?
“I mean, I’m sure. I thought NASCAR did a pretty good job, honestly, with it all. I mean, things just happen so fast. So, yeah, everything can always be better and avoided. And, you know, the circumstances are very unique. So now that it’s happened, you know, the second time around, everybody’s going to have it kind of figured out.”
And then you mentioned you’ve seen these scenarios play out before just as a fan. With everything going on for you on the track with good finishes, but also some off-track stuff making some guys in the garage maybe a little unhappy, do you see it as an example of a young driver kind of taking your legs as you try to grow and mature?
“Yeah, maybe so. I think the biggest thing for me, you know, I’ve just been a fan forever, right? And you always saw the rookie get pushed around and, you know, just kind of have to pay their dues. And I was just like — man, if I’m ever in that spot, I’m never going to get pushed around. That’s how you lose opportunities of races. You never know how long you’re going to be in the garage, for one. None of us have a shot clock waiting on us.
You never know. So for me, I want to take advantage of every opportunity I have out there and have no regrets of the effort I’ve put in. And maybe at times, instead of just not letting myself get pushed over, I’m trying to push other people over, and that was the wrong mindset or wrong decision at times.
But the biggest thing for me was just I didn’t want to leave anything on the racetrack that, you know, looking back long after, I could have won here, or I could have ran really good here. Maybe my career would have been differently if I, you know, came out of the gate as good as we did because I lost the opportunity. And, you know, who knows. But as long as I was just putting 100%, I wouldn’t have any regrets on how anything turned out. Just sometimes when you’re going 110%, that’s sometimes where you’re like — oh, I didn’t really need to do that part.”
You sit 60 points below the playoff cut line, and we’ve had three new winners in the last four races. Are you feeling more stressed to win a race and lock yourself in or do you think you can still point your way in?
“Yeah, I mean, I think by the third DNF, I think our mulligan was over for pointing in. We had already kind of been pointed in. That’s kind of why, you know, when we ran second at Nashville, we were frustrated. Even Atlanta, I was disappointed to run second because our stage points, I think were seventh or eighth highest stage points, but we were like 32nd in finish points. There’s just been a lot of, you know, freak issues or certain circumstances that took us out of races that we’d be in a lot better spot. But you’re just giving up points nonstop. We could find those 60 points really easily between like two or three races, unfortunately, But yeah, it’s not shell shock that we’re sitting here in a must-win kind of situation.”
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