Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: NASCAR Cup Series rookie Carson Hocevar, who is 23rd in the standings while racing for Spire Motorsports. This interview has been edited and condensed.
1. What is currently the No. 1 thing on your bucket list?
Probably to race the Indy 500.
What are the height deals for that? Can you get low enough? (Hocevar is nearly 6-foot-4.)
That’s where I don’t know. When I was a kid, I always said I was never going to do it because I was always terrified of my legs getting ripped off, basically. They’d be so far in the wing. But they’ve started fixing that problem, I’ve noticed over the last handful of years. That would be really cool, and I just ran a Radical (British sports car). So it was my first time ever like laying down in a car driving it and it had an IndyCar-style wheel. And that’s what I’m like, “OK, yeah. One hundred percent I would want to get comfortable.”
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Obviously, Kyle (Larson) doing it and saying it feels similar to a Cup car … I’d never experienced anybody doing the Double really except Kurt (Busch), but I wasn’t so invested in it. I was still pretty young. Now seeing it as a race car driver, I’m like, “Man, that’s only going up on my list.”
2. How much media coverage of NASCAR do you consume?
A lot. Obviously, I’m on Twitter a lot. I mostly interact with you (Hocevar has become known for giving unique feedback each week on the “Good Race Poll”). I watch (NASCAR YouTuber) Eric Estepp’s videos a lot. I’ll see his videos and I’ll watch it every time.
The weekly @CarsonHocevar explanations of his Good Race Poll vote have become a fun new tradition. Some recent ones: pic.twitter.com/5fHHdJR1cl
— Jeff Gluck (@jeff_gluck) April 8, 2024
3. Beyond winning, what is the best way to measure success in racing?
There’s a handful of things like comparing to how the car was the year before and comparing to teammates. People know the situation you’re in, where you’re at. There could be a lot of things behind the scenes that make this car way better, but it’s just the expectations of, “This car should run here.” It’s really clear to tell where budgets are, right? The budgets basically say where you’re going to run.
It’s no different than any other sport. Like when the Oakland A’s won 20 games straight (with the “Moneyball” team), they shouldn’t have even been close to that. Their budget is really how you measure how the lineup should be.
4. What is an opinion you have about NASCAR you don’t think is shared by the fans?
There are so many different factors fans will think in regard to how the cars run or how this does that. The only thing I disagree with is (fans thinking) any little change will result in the racing being different. And a lot of times I’m like, “OK, this doesn’t really matter.” The dumbest of things will change and somebody will tweet it out and (fans think), “Oh, the racing is gonna be way worse.” And then we never talk about it ever again. It’s like, “What does that have to do with anything?”
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5. What is the biggest thing fans don’t realize about what you do for a living?
What’s overlooked, because the teams aren’t ever going to show it, is how beneficial the simulator is. We hear it, but you never physically know unless you drive it how valuable it is — at least on the Cup side. On the Xfinity and Truck side, it’s not as good. In Cup, there’s a lot more data for them. They can take all the SMT data — throttle, brake trace — and basically sit in there until you’re driving the simulator and it matches perfectly. They can make it as good as physically possible. But Xfinity and Truck don’t have that type of SMT.
That’s one thing that doesn’t get talked about, because obviously teams don’t really want it. They’re not gonna say, “Look how close the simulator is!” But yeah, it’s pretty crazy. If I sneeze in there, they’ll probably have it on my data just because there are sensors on everything. They’re trying to make it match identically, and they just let you drive and keep tuning the tire and everything to make it match.
6. For this question, I’m asking something current related to each person. On May 7, a tornado came through your hometown of Portage, Michigan. It destroyed 60 buildings and damaged another 538. How were your family and friends affected by all that? How’s that been for the town?
It’s pretty catastrophic. But you didn’t list how many people died or were injured because I don’t think there were any deaths. Obviously, a lot of buildings and businesses and houses were destroyed in that, but to have nothing catastrophic deaths-wise is huge. That part was a miracle.
I was just there this (month) with a fundraiser with Zeigler (Auto Group, one of his sponsors) and we raised a little over $35,000 in one little quick turnaround event. But it’s pretty crazy to walk down the street and the local pizza joint is completely ripped apart. You wouldn’t know it’s a building. Everybody who was traveling with me didn’t live there and they don’t know exactly what’s all there. It wasn’t until I was pointing out “That was a building” and “This was here” that they knew, and they were all shocked.
My parents’ store was hit, but luckily it wasn’t too bad (Hocevar’s family owns a store called Scott’s Sports Cards, Coins & Jewelry). Part of the roof got taken off, but luckily the part that got taken off was an extension, so it had a metal roof already. But nothing got opened up where you can see out. Some windows got damaged, obviously, gutters and a tree came down.
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But the building right next door got the whole side of the building off, and the houses right behind got the roofs completely off. There’s still no roofs; they’re just tarps, which obviously was worse because they had a lot of hail and rain coming through, so there was a lot of water damage.
In the grand scheme of things, we were really lucky on our end. My house was only 10 minutes away. There were buildings from the store to the house that were completely ripped off their hinges and flattened, basically. But my house — my mom was there, and she didn’t even know if a tornado had hit the town of Portage. So it’s just crazy.
7. This is a wild-card question. You chime in regularly on the “Was it a good race?” poll. You’re typically voting from your perspective. But in general, what do you think makes for a good NASCAR race?
It’s the finish nine times out of 10. If you get a really good meal, but then the dessert comes out and it sucks, you’re not even going to remember how good your meal was. If it’s a complete snoozer for the last 50 laps, how good really was it? Or if it’s a barnburner for one lap, that’s obviously going to be very noticeable, but it sucked all the way until the one lap.
The biggest thing is just unpredictability that makes a good race. … Like if second at least has a shot. We were pumped when Kyle (Busch) was reeling (Christian) Eckes in at Bristol (in a Truck Series race Busch was running for Spire Motorsports earlier this year). He was running the top and we’re like, “If the top ever, like, burns in …” and then it burned in. So for 50 laps, he kept catching him a little bit at a time (before finishing second). So it’s just a question mark all race, like, “Is he going to get there or not?”
8. What do you like about the place you grew up?
I don’t like big cities. (Portage) is a little town that’s really grown, but everything is close enough in the sense I would ride my bike everywhere. There are little local joints, there’s every chain you’d want. There was a big mall next to my house, a strip mall next to my house that had stuff for breakfast, lunch, snacks, a grocery store that made it super easy for me to bike ride. I could do whatever I wanted, basically, without needing a license, so that made it most fun for me.
9. What personality trait are you the most proud of?
I like to have fun and don’t get down too much. I don’t really let anything bother me. Which could be a bad thing at times, right? Like, if I lose something, I’m like, “I’ll just find it.” People are like, “What do you mean?” “Well, anytime I look, I never find it. So I’ve just stopped looking and I’ll just find it eventually.” Things like that annoy a lot of people, but I haven’t just completely lost something. Whether it’s a day, a week or a month, it somehow turns up. So I’m just quitting the stressing. I’ll just find it.
10. Which driver would you least like to be stuck with on an elevator?
Probably Noah (Gragson), just because if we’re ever stuck in an elevator, he’d be the guy to just jump, like, “Man, it’s not working. Maybe I can just knock this thing up.” And I would not be very productive on how to get out, so between both of us, we’d somehow set it on fire.
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11. What is a run-in you’ve had with a driver that TV or the media missed?
I don’t think I’ve really had one they’ve missed. It’s pretty clear, all the run-ins I’ve had. Maybe the one they missed, but social media caught it, was Kyle Busch wrecking me at Texas. He was mad at me for something, so he just went down into Turn 1 and hooked me. TV didn’t catch it, but Twitter did; they showed the in-car (camera). But then we both finished top-10, so I was like, “I can’t be too mad.” Him spinning me tore up my car and forced me into a different strategy that caught the yellow. It wasn’t like we ran 28th like we were originally going to. But then obviously, he’s had plenty of run-ins after that, so karma worked out for itself, I guess.
12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next person. Last week was Christopher Bell. And he says you performed really well part-time in the 42 last year. How has it been different now that you are full-time in the series? And has the year gone to your expectations?
The year has gone to our expectations. We’ve ran well. We’ve been able to finish every race but Daytona, which, what are you gonna do there? We’ve had speed periodically; we want to be super fast every week, but it’s not that far in between when we’re running really strong. We’re running in the top 10, top 15 pretty often, so that’s really good for us. We’re 21st in points (at the time of this interview, but now 23rd), which is really strong for rookies. Like, rookies who go on to win championships always tend to be anywhere from 18th to 23rd (in their first season). It seems we set that goal for ourselves.
Running with the 42 Cup car last year helped me be able to try a lot of things. There was no points on the line because they were really deep in the standings. I had full creative control of how aggressive I wanted to be. I got a bunch of freebies, per se. I already had my deal signed for this year, so I’m not racing out there for a job. Like, if I make a mistake or I crash, oh well — I’d miss out on a prize money check. So I really just took advantage of almost having my rookie year be that. I had a crash course … it was kind of like an orientation, oddly enough.
The next interview is going to be with Shane van Gisbergen. What do you think you’d like to ask him?
Can I ask a two-parter? What was the first American meal when you came over here that shocked you? And then how does the travel in NASCAR from race to race compare to Supercars race to race?
GO DEEPER
NASCAR New Hampshire takeaways: Wet-weather tire dilemma, Christopher Bell shines
(Top photo of Carson Hocevar last weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway: Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
