Much-Maligned Carson Hocevar Leads NASCAR Field to Prove Doubters Wrong

21-year-old Carson Hocevar is one of the drivers gunning to be the 2024 Cup Series Rookie of the Year. He was promoted to the premier tier after an impressive show in the trucks and is currently piloting the No. 77 Chevrolet at Spire Motorsports. Through the first 22 races of the season, Hocevar has made a strong case for why he belongs at this level of the game through a NASCAR-recognised stat.

The sanctioning body has been using the Olympic break to hand out awards to the drivers who’ve been at their best thus far this season. And the youngster has been named as the one who has done the most with the least. What primarily led to this award is his superior performance against his teammates Corey LaJoie and Zane Smith. He has a 33-11 record that translated to a winning percentage of 75.

No other driver has a better head-to-head against their teammates as Hocevar has against his. The record counts the number of teammates that he finished ahead of in a particular race as wins and the teammates he finished behind as losses. Interestingly, he also has a winning record of 154-147 against other Chevrolets. Where has such dominance got him?

He currently sits 24th on the points table. His best finish of the year was the eighth place that he secured at the World Wide Technology Raceway. He has gone 21 races inside the top 30, an active record surpassed only by Chase Elliott in the current field. The remaining races in the season will determine if he can edge out Stewart-Haas Racing’s Josh Berry to be the year’s best rookie.

Hocevar continues to stir up trouble with aggressive driving

Hocevar was fined $50,000 and penalized 25 points for spinning out Harrison Burton in Nashville under caution. He maintained that he only slightly bumped Burton, as others have done to him. The promotion and other drivers didn’t take his side, however. Defending champion Ryan Blaney was particularly critical of the move and supported the hefty fine.

He said at the Art Institute of Chicago, “I think NASCAR did the right thing of penalizing because you have to slap people on the (wrist). There has to be repercussions for what you do when it’s something like that.” He’d hoped that the fine would teach Hocevar a lesson but it did little. The youngster created more trouble during the Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis.

He, rather greedily, attempted to go three-wide on a restart that came with 109 laps remaining to go. He made contact with Blaney during this effort and set off a chain reaction that ended with Joey Logano and Jimmie Johnson suffering DNFs. Some drivers blamed him for the incident but others such as Kevin Harvick did express support.