Carson Hocevar Matches Career-Best Result with Second at Nashville

Andrew Nelles / The Tennessean / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Although things haven’t worked out as they would have hoped, Carson Hocevar and the No. 77 Spire Motorsports team have found themselves in the conversation to capture a victory in the NASCAR Cup Series in back-to-back weekends.

In last weekend’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Hocevar was a top-five running in the closing stages of last weekend’s gauntlet, when the engine in his Chevrolet exploded and forced him to retire from the event. This weekend, while nothing catastrophic happened, the 22-year-old driver finished runner-up to Ryan Blaney at Nashville.

It certainly wasn’t from a lack of effort, though. After starting outside the top-25, the native of Portage, Michigan was able to methodically climb his way through the pack to secure stage points at the end of the second stage, after arriving inside the top 10.

The closer the race got to the checkered flag, the higher Hocevar rose in the running order, placing his Zeigler Auto Group-sponsored entry sixth before the final cycle of pit stops, which happened under the green flag. Hocevar and his team gained four spots in that pit cycle.

With 53 laps remaining and the green-flag cycle ongoing, Hocevar was planted eight seconds behind eventual race-winner Ryan Blaney, and although he dramatically closed the gap in the final laps, as small as 2.5 seconds, there was just no way for the Spire Motorsports driver to close the remainder of the gap.

“[Ryan Blaney] was backed up to me and I was like, ‘Okay, I have a shot’, and then I caught [the lapped traffic] that he caught," Hocevar said after the race.

One of the major issues throughout the 300-lap contest in Nashville was passing. It was tough to pass, whether it be a lead-lap car, or a car that had already been lapped, it was virtually impossible to make a pass, something that ultimately hindered the No. 77 for getting in the fight for the win.

The second-place finish, despite being a career-best and a positive result, left Hocevar with a bit of a hole in his heart, as like most racecar drivers, the young driver wanted to park it in Victory Lane for his team and sponsors.

“My dream, and the expectation is to be here and win races and be up front. So yeah, you’re disappointed. I feel like if I wasn’t disappointed, I don’t deserve this seat,” said Hocevar. “When I was a fan, I would hate when people were pumped about second or pumped about third. I said I would never be like that, and I feel like I’m not. It’s tough to love by when you’re consistently not winning, but I’m proud of the execution.”

“I can still be happy about how we executed; we were the second best today. I don’t think we were any better than [Blaney], or anything I could have done differently, but still just you want to win.”

The second-place finish launches Carson Hocevar and the No. 77 to 17th in NASCAR Cup Series point standings heading to Michigan International Speedway next weekend. The second-year driver currently sits 18th on the Playoff Grid, with only a four-point deficit.

However, Hocevar wants to win a race, and he knows that with the regular-season winding down, those opportunities are week by week becoming more and more scarce.

“I just know we’re running out of opportunities for this year’s regular season, you’re running out of opportunities, and not every week you’re going to be up front,” Hocevar said. “Statistically, we don’t have that luxury, so every opportunity, you don’t know how long in between it's going to be when you have a shot at running up front.”

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Joseph Srigley
JOSEPH SRIGLEY

Joseph Srigley covers NASCAR for TobyChristie.com, Racing America, and OnSI, and is the owner of the #SrigleyStats brand. With a higher education in the subjects of business, mathematics, and data analytics, Joseph is able to fully understand the inner workings of the sport through multiple points of perspective.