Carson Hocevar‘s No. 77 car ended up backwards on pit road after he made contact with Christopher Bell during the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. The incident happened after Hocevar spun out on Lap 152, prompting NASCAR to issue the third caution of the race.
Darlington has not been kind to Carson Hocevar. Before the pit road incident, the 22-year-old called out Chase Elliott after making contact with him.
“F*ck him,” Hocevar said on his radio, via Matt Weaver of Motorsport. “I don’t care who he drives for.” Hocevar has had an interesting 2025 season. Because of his aggressive driving style, Hocevar has had confrontations with multiple drivers, including Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who confronted Hocevar on pit road after the Mexico City race.
Carson Hocevar will not change in the near future
In July, Hocevar appeared on Dale Jr. Download and said he has studied Ross Chastain over the years. “I studied Ross when I was, because we were at Niece. My first time at Martinsville, I got on the front row, spun me out,” Hocevar said to Dale Earnhardt Jr.. “First corner. Just backed me right in the fence, got back up to fifth, spun me out again. And I left that race track saying, ‘I will never, I’m not going to be the f***ing guy that gets beat around. Especially when I have Ross in the shop, I’m like, ‘He just annihilates everybody. They never give it back to him. They don’t do anything.’”
Hocevar also talked about not changing anytime soon, “Yeah, I mean, I mean, I’m 22 now, right? I’ve raced for a long time,” Hocevar continued. “I think the biggest thing for me is like I realize that there are certain things you just can’t change.
“You’re instinctly [sic] – you know, when I race, I don’t, s**t, I don’t half the time, know what I’m doing. It’s just autopilot. You know, when I ran Chicago last week, we were qualifying and we qualified third, but we actually should have qualified a tenth off SVG. Actually, the only corner I remember and like thought of just like, I had a thought of how I’m going to approach this corner, I lost four and a half tenths. I completely f***ed it up.”
Hocevar is in his second season as a full-time Cup Series driver and has earned six top-10 finishes this year. He was named the NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year in 2024.
