‘I’m not going to apologize for having a shot to win’ - Hocevar

Carson Hocevar didn’t have as bad a week as one might imagine after being the center of attention following last Sunday’s race at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Hocevar, who finished a career-best second in his Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, had two drivers wanting to talk to him and others talking about him. Ross Chastain, Hocevar’s mentor, was one driver who took him aside, and Ryan Blaney was another who spoke to him on pit road. Kyle Busch expressed frustration with Hocevar’s on-track moves over his in-car radio and wasn’t surprised to see people talking to him after the race.

“I’ve enjoyed the moment of just being a second-place finisher in Cup,” Hocevar said ahead of this weekend's event at Circuit of The Americas. “I think my guys have really enjoyed it. Other than the conversations you saw, everything else in my world has been positive. There hasn’t been anything else that has come up.”

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The criticisms lobbed Hocevar’s way were about the moves he made and how aggressive he raced. Hocevar tagged Ryan Blaney with 27 laps to go, which put Blaney out of shape and ended with the 2023 series champion going for a spin in Turn 1. Chastain wanted an explanation for why Hocevar didn’t push him down the backstretch in the final laps.

Hocevar made it three-wide on the backstretch by squeezing between Chastain and Bell. On the final lap, Hocevar shoved Bell clear of Kyle Larson going into Turn 3 and then again made it three-wide between Bell and Larson as he looked for the lead and the win.

“I’ve been able to really enjoy it and take it in, and the conversations that my team has behind the scenes with our manufacturer and other teams have all been positive from my recollection or what I’ve been told,” Hocevar continued. “And that’s been appreciative of me, too. They saw what I had and the plan. I’m not going to apologize for having a shot to win the race and seeing a trophy. I thought it worked out really well. The apology I gave to Hendrick (Motorsports) and Chevy was that I didn’t see the replay -- and I was apologizing for the circumstances that the yellow came out. It just happened to work out that way, and I didn’t time out right.

“But for what we could control and we internally as a group at Spire, it’s all been positive for me, and it’s been a lot of fun. [CEO] Jeff Dickerson, I’ve never seen him so happy, and that I think is the most fulfilling because I look at him like a father figure and it’s like I just hit my Tee-ball for the first time and my dad is proud of me again.”

As of earlier this week, Hocevar had not had additional conversations with drivers since Atlanta. But he admitted there are no better drivers to learn from than Blaney, a former champion, and Chastain, who has been a friend and mentor. It wasn’t lost on Hocevar that Chastain went through a similar learning curve and who was also criticized for moves he made on the racetrack. However, Hocevar also admitted that there is a limit to what he needs to take under consideration while not losing his personality.

“(Blaney), I owe an apology to,” Hocevar said. “Obviously, it worked out for him, so that conversation was quick because he wasn’t as mad because he finished right next to me and had a shot to win. But that’s something I should have known, and I second-guessed. I went to block (William Byron), and with that, I didn’t slow down as much. It was a misjudgment, and I obviously apologize for that.

“But being aggressive, you don’t have many friends when you’re the new guy up front. My teammates had issues of their own, and I didn’t have guys I could bank on. So, I had to fight and claw, and with that, I had to be aggressive and make some drivers uncomfortable. But at the same time, besides (Blaney), I’m not sure who we 100% hit other than filling really tight holes and pinch and aero block and play offense and defense. This car rewards being aggressive.

"Obviously, we had a shot to win the race, and I was, I think, the most aggressive. So, the end result means if you play aggressively and you have a really fast car, you can take advantage of being aggressive. So, being able to balance that out so that I don’t have to apologize to the 12 next time is the thing that I could clean up, and it’s one less of a mistake.”