Can Carson Hocevar be the transcendent driver NASCAR has been looking for?

Hocevar, who is "unapologetically himself," has won over fans with his one-of-a-kind personality. After Sunday at Talladega, he's now winning Cup races, too. Sean Gardner / Getty Images Share articleWhen NBC Sports announcer Leigh Diffey bestowed the nickname “Hurricane” on driver Carson Hocevar last year, he couldn’t have known how apt it would end up being. At the time, Diffey was simply referring to Hocevar as a hurricane on the track for the way he raced — sort of like the Tasmanian Devil character from Looney Tunes. Since then, it’s become even more fitting: Like a hurricane, Hocevar forges his own path in everything from driving to his online presence. And after breaking through on Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway for his first career Cup Series victory, the Spire Motorsports driver seems poised to one day take the NASCAR world by storm. Hocevar’s viral celebration at Talladega was the embodiment of an unconventional 23-year-old who does things his way. Drivers and team members stopped what they were doing on pit road after the race to stare at the big screen as Hocevar took his car for a victory lap while sitting on the driver’s side window frame — his long legs somehow allowing him to reach the gas pedal. Fans roared as Hocevar’s car made its way down the frontstretch, with the driver looking right at them and pointing their way. “If there’s a video of how loud the crowd got, that’s going to be the one that I cry to,” Hocevar said. “That’s what means the most to me, is just that people spent money to be here, and I did something that got them to yell and cheer or throw something.” Hocevar thinks that way because he was, and remains, an obsessive NASCAR fan himself. The celebration was an offseason idea Hocevar had when he recalled seeing his favorite driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., win in person at the 2014 Daytona 500. There’s a famous shot of Earnhardt waving at fans during the victory lap, but Hocevar thought of how the fans can’t see the driver’s reaction from outside of the car. So Hocevar found a way to do both as cheers rained down from the grandstands. “A lot of race fans probably always dream of racing; maybe they vicariously get to drive through me,” he said. On many weekends, when NASCAR’s lower-tier O’Reilly Series and Truck Series are racing on Fridays or Saturdays, Hocevar can be found up in the stands sitting with fans. Then, during weekdays, he spends many a night on the iRacing simulator platform, live-streaming his competitions on Twitch. The near-constant interaction with fans is something many of them seem to appreciate; perhaps Hocevar feels more accessible to fans than many other drivers because he is still one of them. “Carson is more like those people than a lot of the guys he races with,” Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson said. “People see the genuineness of it.” It's the celebration everyone is talking about. Now, hear the backstory, courtesy of the man himself, @CarsonHocevar. pic.twitter.com/kTqRqGiUy6 — NASCAR (@NASCAR) April 27, 2026 But fan interaction and a savvy content creation game only get a driver so far. He also has to perform on the track, and that’s where Hocevar has really made waves. He climbed into Spire’s No. 77 car in 2024, after a season in which the team finished 32nd in the point standings with no top-10 finishes. With the same crew from the previous season, Hocevar, as a rookie, went out and finished 21st in the standings — the sort of out-of-nowhere performance that simply doesn’t happen in modern-day NASCAR. Even more puzzling is where Hocevar claims to get his speed. He professes not to study data like most other drivers but instead spends time watching old races, dreaming of attempting racing lines others have not. Some work and some don’t, but his uniqueness seems made to entertain either way. “He has probably the most irrational confidence of a driver I’ve ever seen,” Dickerson said. “That somehow pays off.” In his first two seasons, Hocevar repeatedly clashed with veteran drivers and made some head-scratching, cringeworthy decisions. He refused to back down or show remorse despite ruffling feathers. But this year, he seems to have cleaned up his racing and is pairing his raw speed with better finishes (Hocevar climbed to eighth in the point standings after Sunday, ahead of expected championship contenders like Christopher Bell and William Byron). Spire has taken a step up as well; Dickerson’s co-owner, Dan Towriss, owns the new Cadillac F1 Team. Towriss is the CEO of TWG Motorsports, the racing arm of TWG Global — which owns the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Lakers, among other sports properties. The team’s other two drivers, Daniel Suárez and Michael McDowell, are also in contention for playoff berths (none of the Spire drivers made it last year). Spire’s leadership seems to be willing to let Hocevar be himself. He may run late for meetings and make them shake their heads at times — either for good or bad — but everyone agrees he’s one of a kind. “There’s no mold for Carson Hocevar,” said his crew chief, Luke Lambert. “Nobody had a focus group to decide what a driver should look like and came up with Carson Hocevar. He is unapologetically himself.” If Hocevar can continue to run toward the front of the field and contend for race wins, he could be just the driver NASCAR has been searching for as it seeks ways to rev up its sputtering popularity. Just one day before Hocevar’s first career win, NASCAR announced a new CEO, 57-year-old Steve O’Donnell, had replaced 81-year-old Jim France with immediate effect. O’Donnell said in his opening remarks that he hoped NASCAR could get back to being fun again and urged drivers to show their personality for the benefit of the sport. Then Hocevar won and did that celebration, as if to prove O’Donnell’s point. Some fans and even the Fox Sports broadcast, used to NASCAR’s old ways, immediately speculated Hocevar’s celebration would be outlawed (it is a bit dangerous, after all, for a driver to hang out the window of his car while steering it on the track). But O’Donnell, who sat in the room for all of Hocevar’s post-race news conference, praised the celebration as “so cool” and “terrific.” “That guy takes a lot of grief, but he gets out there and races, he is who he is, and the fans have always said they want personalities,” O’Donnell said. NASCAR, which chose to feature Hocevar as one of three young drivers in its recent “Rising” docuseries, certainly can see the potential for him to break through beyond the racing bubble. That’s hard for any driver to do these days, but several more wins might launch Hocevar’s stock based on his combination of speed and authenticity. That might be a new realization for fans just learning about him, but Spire noticed this was possible long ago. “We certainly saw a star in the making,” Dickerson said. “Today, it looks like we knew what we were doing.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms