NASCAR CUP SERIES
BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES
APRIL 12, 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 Bristol Motor Speedway.
Media Availability Quotes:
First of all, sorry for your loss this week. Within the last hour, you posted a picture on social of you and I’m guessing your grandmother and grandparents. Can you just tell the story and the significance about that photo, and why it was important to share that with the world?
“Yeah, I mean, those were photos that I’d never seen before. They were going through my grandparents’ house and found a bunch of photos that they sent to me last night and this morning, so those were photos that I had never seen or I had forgot about. But, you know, I thought that was important for me to look at or post today. She fell when I was getting ready to qualify for Phoenix, and my grandpa called me. I didn’t know he knew how to use the phone, and my grandma fell getting the mail on the way to watch us qualify. I just know she won’t miss another qualifying session or watch another race. She was one of my biggest supporters.
But, yeah, I like to post things that mean stuff to me, obviously. I do all my own social just because, you know, it’s easy to lose things or lose photos or anything, so putting that out there, it makes it easier to know where that photo is going to be.”
So do you remember that moment from the photo?
“I remember a handful, but yeah, that one specifically, I remember always wearing my Dale Jr. shirts at that point. That was my favorite shirt to wear because it looked like his race suit. So, you know, it looks really similar to the shirts you see us wear now. You know, it looks like the suit. So that was at Disney World, which we’d go a thousand times. We stopped going there because it was either you go to Disney World or you pay for your tires when I started racing. But that was a really fun week and trip that I hadn’t seen photos of in a very long time.”
To get into racing, this will be the last race before you get a weekend off, and after that, there isn’t a weekend off the rest of the season. Drivers talk about — hey, I just as soon be in the car every day of the year. What will be the challenge after this Easter break of racing every weekend, whether it’s for you, the team, or everything in general?
“I feel like everybody’s so used to it. For us, I think it would be important to have that reset and then be able to go and hopefully we can refire really strong and get the finishes I feel like we’ve been striving for and feel like we could get or are capable of getting.
If we get on a roll, I don’t think any of us are going to want to stop or take a break and break up that momentum. So I think it’s a good time for everybody to get a reset and then hopefully have a really big push and make that be the second half of the year.”
Following up on that, you look at your recent results. Do you look at the results or do you look at performance? How would you assess this little stretch right now?
“Well, yeah, you look at the results, but then when the results aren’t good, you’ve got to look at the running average or where we’re at and wonder why. And luckily, Jeff Dickerson is the most understanding guy of all time basically and he’s the one that is just like — man, we’ve just got to finish the race because I don’t know what to tell you how to finish. You blow a tire, you blow this, you do this. It’s kind of all things out of our control-ish, right? Just kind of freak things that are just toppling on each other. But we’re running good, so I think that was the biggest thing that he said is just don’t get so caught up in the results right now because we’re not a 30th-place race car. We’re not slow. He’s like, man, right now we’re just trying to find new ways to finish 30th. So it’s just out of the get-go. We’re over this. We’ve gotten out of the way.
He reminded me there were times last year where we weren’t great and other guys had misfortune, so we finished good. So I think it’s sustainable for us long-term, for sure, to be fast and wonder what’s kind of keeping us from finishing good, rather than be slow and not sure why we’re finishing okay. Let’s keep all of us hungry and excited and keeping our group together, right? If you get five 30th-place finishes in like eight races, you start looking at crew guys, crew members and everything. Our group is so strong. We’re so good on pit road. We’re good on the racetrack throughout the race at some point that, and we know everybody on our group’s plenty capable of the potential of finishing really good. It’s just we just got to be able to, you know, take advantage of the adversity. And as my dad would remind me when I was a kid racing is they are character building moments and our No. 77 team’s going through that right now.”
You’ve had flashes here at Bristol of really good things. You’re a short track guy, came up that way. But what is the challenge here compared to, I guess, what you grew up doing and what we would call a traditional short track, so to speak?
“Yeah, I mean, you’re going so fast, right? The dirty air is a factor. You know, compared to that, the banking’s a lot. The track compound is always a confusion, right, of if it’s going to be on the bottom and what you’re going to get.
You never really 100% know when the top’s going to burn in and when it’s not. It’s a little easier to predict for the Cup races because it’s 400 or 500 laps that you can kind of guess what the pattern’s going to be just because you run enough laps. But, you know, I remember when I ran trucks here, it always was a question mark if it was going to be burned in by the end of the race or at the start, and you saw that yesterday without any practice or anything. It started to move up the racetrack at, like, the last 10 laps or something. So, yeah, it’s always a difficult deal here of just track position and balancing it out, and everybody being super, super good and moving around or trying to. I got to run here in a late model when I was about 14 or whatever, so it’s still got a little bit of feel to that when I was 14 racing here.”
Your No. 77 team really had a lot of stability over the off-season, but on the whole, when you look at what Spire Motorsports is doing and growing, how has just the influence or the leadership of guys like Rodney, Travis, Michael, even though they’re not directly working with your team, organizationally, do you feel like that’s lifted you or at least let you have some new ideas to work on your own path?
“I’m sure a little bit there. You know, for me on my craft, I’m very stubborn and like to go my own direction, do my own things, and I think that’s been healthy for us.
You know, Michael (McDowell) has his process. Justin (Haley) has his process. I have mine. But apart from the race cars, where I see a lot of impact on our program is the unsung heroes. You know, it’s the Matt McCall’s, you know, the Dax’s, and a handful of others, right, that are in the competition space.
You know, Ryan Sparks not being on a pit box and overseeing the whole program. It’s those three guys and the others that are sitting at home or sitting in the race shop right now that have really impacted the No. 77 more. Travis and Rodney, they’re working on their own stuff. They still work together, but it’s the job of Matt, Ryan, and everybody else to figure out what Rodney and Travis are doing and communicate that to the 77 car and vice versa and ultimately, you know, have all three cars be fast.”
Earlier today, Jesse Love was in here talking about his Cup debut and how he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. So I was curious, do you remember the first time you started a Cup race here? I was only your fourth start and you finished 11th. I was curious, what was that process like for you adapting to this track and 500 laps?
“Yeah, I remember I ran the truck race, and it was different, right? You know, I got to come in the fall race, and I had a Cup deal signed to go full-time the next year. We just ran third or fourth in the truck race, and I was like plus 30 to make the final four on points. So I showed up with not looking at any data, any SMT for Cup, because I was so focused on the truck deal to make that race. I remember showing up thinking, you know, I’m just going to go out here and figure it out. I don’t think I looked at one piece of information. I didn’t sleep and, you know, mainly just breezed through that whole weekend and had a really, really good time with those guys and Luke and everybody. I remember being super cool, confident and an ego at an all-time high, probably, per se. And then we ran like fifth, so that didn’t help me or help bring me back down to earth. And then we had a loose wheel and finished 11th.
But yeah, I remember being really excited with it being the Bristol night race. My first few Cup races I did — I got to do the Gateway, obviously a cool track and unique. But I got to do the Southern 500, and the Bristol night race as my second and third ever Cup start. So super cool tracks to fire off and get going. I was not pumped, but it was Luke’s favorite race, and he made me super confident that we were going to be good. I don’t think he expected us to be that good, but it was a lot of fun driving by a lot of heroes of mine and everything. I still remind Rodney that that was the race that went like six laps down on speed. So I remind him of that, and so it’s fun to rag on him a little bit.”
You’ve improved every time you’ve gone to Talladega. Is there something that you’ve worked on to get better because with that place, sometimes it’s just luck on the draw?
“They’ve wrecked more, probably. I normally just sit around.. my average running position is like 33rd, and then I finish is like 14th because they crash, and I just avoid it. That’s kind of been the superspeedway strategy I’ve gone with because it’s really difficult with the way this package is right now. Last year or sure at superspeedways, our cars, even if I could have got the lead, it was just way too draggy, and I wouldn’t be able to hold on. You’d get shuffled out really quick. So if I felt like the best we could be was the high single digits, low teens, I could bank on a crash at the end and having our car safe and being fourth or fifth in line. Maybe they crash the line, and I win the race.
We kind of did that at Daytona again as we improve our cars. At Atlanta, I was able to make a lot of moves and pace, but you can kind of draft on your own and make moves. But at Talladega and Daytona right now, it kind of just gets gridlocked, and I just feel like you’re sitting in line waiting to crash almost at times. I kind of play into the role of, even if you miss the wreck and get a flat tire, you might go a few laps down. I try to pick a strategy rather than just hope on something, so I just kind of just go with the we’re going to wait until the green-white-checkered that always seems to come and then do a race. But this time at Talladega, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll probably try and get track position more because I think our cars are improving, but we’ll just kind of see how that goes.”
Do you think guys will be chomping at the bit to get back to competition after being off for a week?
“Yeah, I mean, maybe… I don’t know. I’ve always looked at superspeedways like they’re another off week almost because you don’t really prep. The preparation and what we look at is so different than anything else. You’re not stressed for qualifying. You’re not stressed on practice. You’re not talking about your race car.
You get Friday and Saturday basically off, and Sunday is just about saving fuel and picking the right line and working with your teammates really late in the race or really late in the stages. So, yeah, I don’t know. I’ve always looked at it like it’s almost an off week, per se, compared to the amount of work that goes into the rest of the races.”
Obviously the results this year haven’t been based on your guys’ speed, but when we watch the race, we usually see you at the front of the pack. Some of your run-ins over the last few weeks have come in the mid-pack. Can you describe just how difficult it is, you know, when you’re having to race in the mid-pack in a race?
“Yeah, I mean it’s a dogfight in the middle, but it’s more so just because everybody’s really close in mid-pack or in the low teens. All cars are good and they know how close they are to getting clean air. You’re only a few spots from getting that. It reminds me of, you know, what you see in sprint car racing now is — the leader will fire off and take off, but the second you catch lap traffic, the whole pack starts to come back into it. And then, if they’re behind lap cars or anything, you start seeing them really race… throwing sliders and then all of a sudden you’re four or five cars on top of each other. It’s kind of similar to what we have right now. Aero-wise is I don’t think too far away from that type of sprint car race you’d see from High Limit or anything else. You know, the top few spread out and it starts building a little closer gap as you get to the high single digits. And then all the teens are on top of each other because they’re all on just bad air.”
People have been around for years and kind of get used to things, but the track has changed, or being a young driver and probably kind of just learning it as you go — how much during the race, during the weekend, do you even know what to expect with the track here?
“Yeah, I mean, I know last year at this time, none of us knew what we were going to have. Where this time now, you’re expecting the worst or even worse than that or somewhere in between. So, you know, for us, I know we’ve planned for all type of scenarios as you can.
Yeah, the spring race last year, I don’t think anybody expected that, but it’s been seen before. You know, I remember watching on TV, in 2008 or whatever it was, at Indy when they had this issue or times before that. But, yeah, it’s just part of it.
Now it’s in the notebook, right? Now it’s in the playbook that this could happen or something similar to that that you have to prepare for. I know when I got my pre-race notes from my spotter, Tyler Green, he almost had three races worth of notes because he had somewhere in between how it was in the spring and the fall race.”
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