NASCAR Cup Series
Daytona International Speedway
Team Chevy Driver Quotes
August 28, 2026
Carson Hocevar, driver of the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series regular season finale weekend at Daytona International Speedway.
Media Availability Quotes:
You’ve obviously been known for being willing to make an aggressive move. Do you think the uncertainty around the new superspeedway package kind of plays into that?
“Yeah, I think so. I think it’ll help, if anything. I was just pumped we had less meetings, less data to go off of and I didn’t fall asleep in a meeting this week, so I was pumped about that. That’s progress right there.”
I was at your guys’ shop on Wednesday talking to Michael McDowell. And he said that going into this season, you said that you wanted to be the guy pushing at super speedways, whereas he wanted to be the guy up front. Then that seemed to have changed after you won at Talladega and had that opportunity out front leading. So what is your mindset now? Are you still wanting to be the pusher in the last couple of laps or do you want to be out front kind of controlling everything?
“No, I still want to be the pusher. Talladega is a little different though. I mean, there’s a lot of differences. Like here, I want to be a pusher. Talladega with what we have for a package, you definitely want to be leading. You don’t want to be, you know, it’s a tough pass there. And then Atlanta, I don’t know what I’m doing. Just left, right, everywhere. You don’t even need to push anybody there. But here, I feel most comfortable pushing. And just for whatever reason, I feel like we just go faster with myself pushing, whether it’s my car or me. It’s advantageous for me to be pushing because it’s just going to help me.”
At the Daytona 500, you were leading right till the very end, and then you weren’t. And I’m wondering, because you weren’t leading at the end at Talladega until you were, was there something you learned here, perhaps, or something you studied from watching what happened at Daytona that you were able to kind of put in the mind and use it to your advantage to get that Talladega win?
“Yeah, well, when I got spun at Daytona, there was no one to the left of me. And I almost got spun at Talladega, but there was someone to the left of me, and it spun them, and it didn’t spin me. So I figured, if you’re going to get spun, just have someone to the left of you and you can keep it straight. And that was the difference maker, which, ironically enough, I kind of laughed and thought after that last caution that we were going to win, just because what Jeff Dickerson’s taught me is that superspeedway racing gods exist.
The 43 was behind me at the DAYTONA 500, the 47 was pushing me, and I spun off the 43. And at Talladega, the 47 pushed me and I got loose and wrecked the 43. So just a little bit of irony there. So hopefully we have– I don’t know, hopefully I picked up enough trash, went to church on time and everything that I built up good karma and hopefully we’ll be fine this week.”
You’re currently 66 points back from Christopher Bell, who sits fifth in the standings. If all goes well, you could potentially move up to fifth in the standings. So what would that mean for you to kind of have a bounce back weekend here?
“I don’t know. How many points is that? It’d be worth about 35 points. That’s how good it would feel when the Chase starts, I guess. I don’t know. I mean, he’d have to wreck pretty early and I’d have to pretty much max out to make that happen. So I don’t know. Maybe I’ll buy a lottery ticket and see which one hits.”
Were you shocked to hear that you are the driver with the number one amount of retail sales in NASCAR?
“I was a little shocked. I was appreciative of it, for sure. But yeah, I was a little shocked. I would say I’m more shocked that I’m in the top-five for at-track sales because we don’t have my own merch trailer or anything, and there’s limited options there. They do a good job selling and pushing them out. But I was more shocked of that, honestly. But for me, I feel like we’re just kind of getting started, so hopefully that trend can continue. But for me, I’m just appreciative of that. That means a lot to me.”
Do you think that maybe there’s a realistic chance that you could be in the running for the most popular driver?
“I mean, it’s possible. It’s possible, for sure. But I feel like if anybody should get it this year, I think it should be Kyle (Busch). So maybe I’ll wait for next year.”
What do you want to hear from your spotter? What do you want to know because of certainly these unknowns? You’re going to figure some things out in the car, but he’s also going to have the wider view. What are you going to ask him for and would it be any different from any other drafting type of race.
“Truthfully, I hope he’s just saying, ‘get all the way to the line, congrats, you just won Daytona’. That’s what I’m hoping to hear. But I don’t know. Honestly, I just hope to hear that it was a good or bad move. I’ll have probably more of a gauge of the draft and the feel of it than he would, honestly, from the outside. But it’s just about us getting on the same page of everything. Hopefully when he says that was a bad move or good move, we’re lining up in our thought process.”
You said in a post earlier this week, “I’m back” heading into this weekend. So how important is it to have a good weekend this weekend to reset for the chase?
“I think for us, we’ve had speed a little bit. But ultimately, we have to just get comfortable, or me especially. I feel like I take a lot of responsibility of it. Our expectations probably shifted, too, quickly when we were about fifth as the top Chevy, and I felt like I was trying to all of a sudden go faster than we need to go. So for me, it’s that we need to just go back to just running and laughing that somehow we were up in the top-five in points. Laughing that we’re up front and enjoying it, rather than have to try and take cars that just aren’t as fast as seemingly the Toyota’s right now, or at flat tracks right now, the Penske cars.
For us, I think this is our strong suit, so I’m excited for it. Hopefully, we can just show speed, be a contender, and play to our strengths. There’s a lot of mile-and-a-halves coming up that are good for us, too. But ultimately, we just kind of need to go back to how I want to race and not put as much pressure on trying to force anything to happen, really.”
I wanted to ask you how different life feels coming to Daytona this time versus when you came in Daytona. So much has happened for you. I think it’s fair to say that your personality is more out there, that you are more out there in general. Does life feel a lot different six months later?
“It does. I don’t know what aspects feel that much differently. It just all feels differently, which I’ve enjoyed. And it’s been fun. And yeah, I mean, you get to walk a little taller, which I’m already tall. But you get to walk a little bit firmer with how we’ve ran this year and everything that we have clicking for us right now. I think we all do that as a company, too. I think we’re really early in this, kind of, plan they have developed for our race team and how fast we can go. So, I’m confident in the trajectory. We get to walk a little bit prouder knowing that we’re pretty fast right now. But tomorrow, the next day and every day after, hopefully we just continue to get a little bit better every time. I’ve always tried to enjoy it because it’s been a dream of mine to do it. I’ve watched other drivers do podcasts, interviews or whatever and talk about how they just were miserable the whole time. I was like, that doesn’t sound very fun. I just try not to have that happen so in 20-30 years and I’m telling those stories, I can be like, we had so much fun… here’s all the stories we got.”
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