First top-10 for Carson Hocevar in NASCAR Cup Series
FORT WORTH, Texas — A Texas tornado of a race Sunday for Carson Hocevar landed him in the top-10 for the first time in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Hocevar finished 10th. He became the 1070th driver to earn a top-10 finish in the Cup Series.
“Pretty good. Our handling went away but we ran decent, top-15. Then we got spun and the car wasn’t anywhere near the same,” he said.
Hocevar alluded to an incident on lap 115 where he spun in turn one. He narrowly avoided the wall as Kyle Busch narrowly avoided him.
Before that, Hocevar ran inside the top-15 and was 20th before a caution put the race on shuffle for the first time on lap 50.
Luckily for Hocevar, after that spin, the race got put on shuffle a couple of times, including on lap 138 when Josh Berry crashed. Hocevar stayed out with around a dozen drivers and came out seventh. He held on to his position for a few laps before sliding to 16th at the end of stage two.
Hocevar again fell outside of the top-25, even despite having speed and a plethora of cautions to help him.
“It was a lot. You just couldn’t pass. You had to fight tooth and nail on restarts so you had to put yourself in a potentially bad spot with all the other guys putting you in bad spot. If you won out, you were lucky and we were on the better end of it,” he said.
The No. 77 Spire Motorsports team improved the rookie’s luck as a caution fell while he stayed out longer than others in the final stage.
He pitted for fresh tires, along with 12 other drivers. Thanks to drivers having to take the wavearound due to the timing of the caution, he was 12th when the race restarted with 32 laps to go.
Five more cautions fell, biting two drivers in the top-10, which elevated Carson Hocevar to his first top-10 finish in the Cup Series.
A year before at Texas Motor Speedway, Hocevar earned his first NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series win.
” It’s just weird that Texas, we won the Truck race last year with a day we shouldn’t have won. And same thing today,” he said.
More importantly, for Spire Motorsports, they earned their first top-10 finish outside of draft-heavy tracks (Atlanta, Daytona, Talladega) and road courses.
Hocevar and Spire have anticipated this rise — and the whole team will now benefit.
“We did [expect to get a top-10 by now]. We just want to have really fast racecars and we’re working toward that. It wasn’t top-10 pace but we put it together for a top-10 finish,” Hocevar said. “We have a shop bonus for average of top-20s and we already did that. We’re on the right track for that again.”
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Jonathan Fjeld View All
Jonathan Fjeld is the co-owner of the The Racing Experts, LLC. He has been with TRE since 2010.
A Twin Valley, MN, native, Fjeld became a motorsports fan at just three years old (first race was the 2002 Pennsylvania 500). He worked as a contributor and writer for TRE from 2010-18. Since then, he has stepped up and covered 24 NASCAR race weekends and taken on a larger role with TRE. He became the co-owner and managing editor in 2023 and has guided the site to massive growth in that time.
Fjeld has covered a wide array of stories and moments over the years, including Kevin Harvick's final Cup Series season, the first NASCAR national series disqualification in over 50 years, Shane van Gisbergen's stunning win in Chicago and the first Cup Series race at Road America in 66 years – as well as up-and-coming drivers' stories and stories from inside the sport, like the tech it takes for Hendrick Motorsports to remain a top-tier team.
Currently, he resides in Albuquerque, N.M., where he works for KOB 4, an NBC station. He works as a digital producer and does on-air reports. He loves spending time with friends and family, playing and listening to music, exploring new places, being outdoors, reading books and writing among other activities. You can email him at fjeldjonathan@gmail.com