Talladega Superspeedway (Talladega, Ala.) — Carson Hocevar celebrated his first career win in epic fashion, probably generating a little bit of concern by NASCAR and his Spire Motorsports owner.
So it was appropriate. Hocevar can be a little polarizing as not always making the smartest decisions on the track, but the 23-year-old Spire Motorsports driver made the smart decisions when it mattered most as he outdueled Chris Buescher to win Sunday at Talladega.
After the win, Hocevar celebrated by driving the car and hanging out the window along the frontstretch. NASCAR seemed good even though it was a little bit unconventional and a little bit dangerous (but it was fun and epic).
“I thought of just like, ‘Man, I have really long legs, I wonder if I can hit the throttle and sit on the door and ride’ and just kind of see everybody,” Hocevar said in his postrace news conference. “I just wanted them to get as loud as possible. And I felt like they would if they could see me seeing them.Â
“Ultimately, I just wanted to make sure I soaked every bit of it in. I think I could tell you what everybody was wearing, where every seat was, where every 77 shirt [of mine] was. …That means more than anything else to me.”
Here are my takeaways from Talladega:
1: Big Hocevar Win
Hocevar earned his first victory in his 91st Cup start. He had won five truck races in his career but had just five top-five finishes in his career. He could have had more but had trouble finishing where he was running.
Carson Hocevar celebrates with Miss Alabama Emma Terry in Victory Lane.
On Sunday, he didn’t make any crazy blocks and used the pushes he got and was able to side-draft Buescher enough to break away and win at the end. Hocevar said losing the Daytona 500 at the end of the race helped him understand what he needed to do Sunday.
“I’m so thankful,” Hocevar said in his FOX interview after the celebration. “This is the biggest dream I’ve ever thought of. … I couldn’t have done it in any better way.”
It was also just the second win for Spire Motorsports, which won a rain-shortened race with Justin Haley in its first season in July 2019, a span of 243 races since that time.
2: Buescher Comes Up Empty
Chris Buescher was left wondering what could have been.
“That’s going to hurt to be that close,” Buescher told me and other reporters following his second-place finish. “We had great momentum coming off of Turn 4, really good spot, going into the trioval.
“And from there, I expected us all to fan out and make a move to try and win the race. … We just lost the momentum too early off of Turn 4.”
3: Bowman Relieved With Third
Alex Bowman was relieved to finish third as he didn’t have many moves he could make at the end and he was able to bring the car home unscathed. He pushed Hocevar to the win.
For a driver who missed four races because of vertigo earlier this year, that was a big deal.
Alex Bowman called his third-place finish at Talladega a “big relief.”
“The big relief for me is not to crash at a place like this — I don’t have many big hits left in me, and I’m tired of crashing,” Bowman told me and other reporters after the race. “So I’m glad that we got through one of these with a strong finish, and happy for the team.
“They’ve had an incredibly rough go of it on a lot of angles for the entire season.”
4: The Big One Eliminates Seven
A 26-car pileup on Lap 115 ended the day for six cars, including that of Bubba Wallace, who took a tap from Ross Chastain and ended up turned in front of the field.
Wallace, William Byron, Josh Berry, Ryan Blaney, Cole Custer, Joey Logano and Kyle Larson all saw their day end as a result of damage in that wreck.
“We’ve got to figure out how to be pushed better, so I take responsibility on that,” Wallace said in his FOX interview after being checked out at the care center. “We’ll have a good debrief and figure out how to make our Toyotas a little bit better being pushed and maybe not have that happen.”
The wreck elicited some strong opinions from drivers, who spent the first stage of the race trying to save fuel and racing far from full throttle. But when at full throttle, they don’t have a lot of moves at their disposal other than pushing the car in front of them to the brink of wrecking.
“What do you want? Save fuel or crash? Pick one. That’s what it feels like right now,” three-time Cup champion Joey Logano said in his FOX interview. “It’s frustrating.
“You’ve got round bumpers on these things, the cars run stable and once everyone starts pushing and racing aggressive, that’s going to happen. Until we fix that stuff, we’re going to continue seeing it, unfortunately.”
4 ½: What’s Next
NASCAR heads to Texas Motor Speedway for its sole visit of the season. It will be a place where teams could take some lessons from Kansas Speedway last week as both are 1.5-mile tracks.
The defending winner at Texas is Joey Logano – who hasn’t won since a year ago.