| NASCAR CUP SERIES TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES MAY 2, 2026 |
Carson Hocevar, driver of the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying session at Texas Motor Speedway. | MEDIA RESOURCES: Photo Gallery | Race AdvancesChevrolet Newsroom |
| NASCAR CUP SERIESTEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAYTEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTESMAY 2, 2026 |
Carson Hocevar, driver of the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying session at Texas Motor Speedway. | MEDIA RESOURCES: Photo Gallery | Race AdvancesChevrolet Newsroom |
Media Availability Quotes: What do you think the balance of power is on intermediate tracks right now? I mean, obviously, the Toyota’s have looked good, and the Hendrick drivers, they seem okay enough because all three of the main guys have finished top-10 for both the 1.5-mile tracks, so far. So it’s not like they’re off, but it seems like our perception is the Chevy’s, you guys are still trying to figure out your body a little bit. So where do you think things stand or stack up right now with the series as a whole like that?“Yeah, I mean, the cream always is going to rise to the top, especially when everybody just kind of has figured these cars out a lot more, obviously. But I feel like of the two mile-and-a-halves, the Toyota’s have been the best. Their two tracks have been Las Vegas and Kansas. Kansas is super strong for 23XI. I remember, consistently, that they’re always one of the fastest cars at Vegas, too. As we get to these other 1.5-mile tracks that have low grip, I’d be curious if they’re still just as strong. Obviously, I’m sure they will be. When you change something, it’s easy to point fingers and forget the history of the fact that those are, in my opinion, the two where I’d be like, okay, Joe Gibbs Racing and 23XI are probably going to be super, super strong. Yeah, I don’t think we’re far off. I feel like we’re right there with the Hendrick cars, like Kansas. Vegas, we just kind of missed it just a little bit. We were still running okay, but I had a bunch of loose wheels. And then Kansas, I think we were ranked fifth in speed, but that still includes having to pass everybody every restart and stuff. I think we could have been up there or at least closer if we restarted up there with them a few times. I think here and in a couple weeks when you go to Charlotte and Michigan, I think you’ll see really what the story is going to be with who’s really, really strong and going to carry that through the rest of the year.” Last year, we were talking about you being the youngest polesitter here. Now, you’re coming back here coming off your first Cup Series victory. You won last night in the Truck Series. How good does everything feel right now? I mean, I know that obviously this for you, you just want this to kind of be a beginning, I would assume, of everything that’s coming…“Yeah, I mean, everything’s so fresh for us on this stuff. We’re laughing about the little things, like we’re excited that we roll out last to qualify and highest on the metric. So, yeah, little victories here and there that you just get to enjoy. Obviously, the people that have won before and win consistently, that’s just part of the job. They’ve been there, done that. For us, it’s all new and we get to finally enjoy it. Hopefully we can roll out last and take advantage of it. Start up front, which is super important here. Pit stops are going to be important. Get a good pit selection and really keep the momentum rolling.” You mentioned that you want to do the Indy 500. Is that just a wish or do you think you could actually do it?“Well, number one, it’s a wish. You know, I think I could actually do it, like as in confidence of running wide open and managing air. I don’t know if I’ll get to do it, literally. But I just hope if I do get a shot that I can go fit the seat and they don’t tell me I’m too tall for the ride. I, for sure, hope that’s not the case. But I’m just enjoying Sunday’s right now for sure, though.” Do you want to do it because it’s just a big racing event? Do you want to do it because you want to go 220-230 miles per hour? What is it that attracts you?“It was my favorite race. Growing up in Michigan, I thought I was going to go race wingless sprint cars for a living. Bryan Clauson was my idol. My double is not the Coca-Cola 600 and Indy 500… my double I thought I’d get to do is the Indy 500 and the Kokomo 30 down the street. You know, that was the double that if I ever did it, that’s what I would consider it. So if I ever do get that shot, it would be a lifelong dream. But it’s just my favorite track, favorite race. NASCAR was always so special, but Indy just was its own thing. It look so different. It’s a month long. They go 230-240 mph and there’s so much prestige to it. It’s no different than I think how F1 drivers look at Le Mans. It’s a totally different sight and sound to them. It’s just so different from everything I’m used to with stockcars, dirt cars or anything growing up. That was the only time I ever sat down and watched the Indy 500 with my family.” You’ve got a couple of Truck Series wins here now. You won the Cup Series pole last year. What is it about this place that just clicks with you?“Yeah, it’s just a lot of throttle. You get to move around a little bit. It just feeds into my kind of style, especially with wanting to be brave down into turn one with how kind of flatted and odd shaped it is. But also, too, kind of over the bumps and getting up there on the limit of the grip that tends to bite people if you get too high. So, yeah, just balancing it all, I think, just kind of fits everything for me.” Sponsorship is such a big deal in this sport. You won last week with Chili’s. You go to Chili’s. You’re always promoting it. So I’m just curious, as a driver who’s always talking about a sponsor, it’s like you have a really genuine, positive relationship with Chili’s. Talk about the relationship and what it means to you.“Yeah, there’s just a lot of friendships and relationships, more than anything. You know, when I say Chili’s, I’m saying all the people I’ve met there more than anything, rather than just the brand. When I say Chili’s, they feel as if I’m just calling out their name one by one because of how close we all are. I met a few of the Chili’s folks at Talladega my rookie year. We were looking out in the parking lot when we were at their cookout area. They still had the selfie when I was a rookie in Trucks at Talladega that we happened to land at each other’s motorhome lot. They still remember it and now here they are, having won Talladega and then won here (at Texas Motor Speedway). They were just race fans showing up; no connections to anything or sponsors. They were just race fans that I happened to find my way into their campsite. We took a photo and just talked racing for 20 minutes and moved on, not thinking we’d ever pass each other again. It’s just the true definition of the story everybody says all the time of you never know who you’re going to meet.” You spoke of wanting to run a wingless sprint car, but would you ever run a 410 sprint car with a wing?“I mean, it would be fun. I’d like to test it, maybe, but I don’t get a lot of FOMO. I get a lot of FOMO like when I watch dirt late model races, and then I try to calculate if we could have flown there in time or if I could have got there. The only track that I ever get FOMO in a sprint car is watching the Knoxville Nationals, when they’re on the very bottom and very top. Just how technical the bottom looks there, it just looks really fun if you hit it right. But I think I’d be pretty nervous of getting hurt and wrecking. I’m not confident in it, just because racing sprint cars was not what I grew up doing. I’d be nervous to ruin what I got here right now because I had have to go sit out because I wanted to go run a sprint car race. It’s a lot easier for me to just go run a dirt late model and be plenty content because the worst thing that happens there is I’d knock the spoiler off the thing and not flip, hopefully.” Jeff Dickerson said you can run a midget at Chili Bowl. Have you made arrangements for what team you’re going to compete with at this point?“The deal was I had to win two races to get to Chili Bowl, so we’re halfway there. I don’t know who we’d do it with. I’m hoping I can give it to Tim Clauson to build some midgets.” Maybe this is an unfair question because you like this track or you’re good here, but this track has gotten a reputation for not putting on the best racing. But then, you see IndyCar puts on a really good show here and last night was an amazing show. What is it about this place that is not necessarily clicking for Cup right now? Does something need to change? Can it naturally be a better Cup race at some point as things evolve? How do you see it?“I thought about it last night because I was kind of wondering, I was like, this is really fun. It was a good race. I thought the biggest thing was you could move up. I could even get out of the black stuff where nobody had ran by accident and it wasn’t an all four-death slide to the fence. You could just have more lanes. Like on iRacing, this is one of the best tracks to race. But we’re running against the fence in (turns) one and two. That was my thought going into this weekend… I was like, man, it’s really fun on iRacing. So I was like, if it some way or another cleans up and we can run higher, I think this track would be super cool for how unique it is and everything. I think it would do well. But when it gets so one lane, you can’t pass. You see with a Next Gen car, it’s the best at a mile-and-a-half, just because there’s more lanes. It’s the best when there’s a lot of lanes. It’s the best when it’s at night and has a lot of grip. Well, this track naturally has a lot of grip, so this should be one of the best Next Gen tracks. IndyCar’s good here. Trucks are really good here. Those are still, I’d say, closer to the Cup car, in terms of like the draft and everything and moving around in clean air with all of them. I don’t know if there’s anything worse in dirty air than an IndyCar, obviously, for how low those things are and how downforce dependent they are. If we can just get more lanes similar to how it was last night, it’s not just a full-blown, completely death sliding scenario. When you get just an inch too high, it’ll be pretty good.” Following up with Chili’s, you left last night out on the frontstretch saying, I got to find a local Chili’s. To me, that is the most pressing question that I need to follow up on because I didn’t see anything on the social media. Did you find a local Chili’s? Were they open? “No… we were heading out there, but all the Chili’s folks, they had the whole campsite and hospitality area. They all just wanted to have a good old-fashioned tailgate, basically, so we just did that. They were like, we have this hospitality thing, we don’t have to leave and coordinate anything… we have it here. They had grills. They had everything, so we just did that and everybody had a good time.” It’s a long season, so you don’t have the benefit of a long off-season to get ready for a season. So what do you do in-season that helps you mentally and physically be able to compete every week at the top? You’re young, so it’s probably a little easier for you than some, but if you could just talk about the strategies that you have to be able to withstand the rigors of a long season… “Yeah, we just try to not get burned out, basically, and feel like every week’s the same week. We run pavement late models, dirt late models. We go racing more. There’s not really a good workout for a driver other than just racing more. That’s probably just the best medicine for all of us is we do that. And then obviously, we stay in the simulator. But the more we race, the more we just get to enjoy it, and every week has something a little different.” |