Less than a week ago, Carson Hocevar felt compelled to punch Ryan Blaney after he was confronted and grabbed by the fire suit in the aftermath of their incident in the Bristol Night Race.
On Friday at Kansas Speedway, Hocevar said the confrontation and how Blaney has handled everything in the days since, cemented just how much admiration and fandom the Spire Motorsports youngster has for the Team Penske champion.
“I think Ryan’s one of the coolest guys in the garage just from a … he’s got a cool mustache and smokes and drinks whiskeys and all that. I think he looks the part really well. So, I thought he made me more of a fan, honestly.”
Hocevar thinks it’s cool that Blaney went on Denny Hamlin’s Actions Detrimental podcast and took half the responsibility for their incident. Blaney could have put makeup over the black eye Hocevar gave him, but he’s owned that he got beat up on Saturday night.
“When he went on there, I was like, all right, respect for that for sure,” Hocevar said. “He could put some ice on his eye or whatnot … I didn’t want to hit him. Looking back, I 100 percent see where he had wanted to maybe just throw a shove in there and then yell at me.
“But I think we both saw each other, and in that moment, you’re not going to see that, you’re to assume the worst.”
Carson Hocevar press conference
Photo by: Jonathan Bachman – Getty Images
So, Hocevar threw the punch.
From that standpoint, it would have been easy to expect Blaney to have more fighting words at Kansas but he didn’t. Instead, the 2023 Cup Series champion conceded that it was unusual for him to initiate a fight, and that his frustrations stemmed from a disappointing start to his Chase for the Championship.
He crashed at Gateway with a brake failure and struggled to get through pre-race technical inspection the week before at Darlington. Blaney and Hocevar were racing for second place when a blocked crossover sent the Penske No. 12 into the wall and even further away from the points lead.
“Gateway ending the way it did was frustrating after having a really good day and throwing away a lot of points,” Blaney said. “And then having to start in the back at Bristol from qualifying being rained out after having our issue at Gateway, doing a really good job getting up through there, had a fast car, had our issue on pit road and we fought back from it and then the night ending poorly again, and just realizing how many more points we lost … It just kind of built and things like that.”
He said all those things just built to a crescendo.
“In my seat, this Chase hasn’t gone exactly how I thought it was going to go, just a couple of rough finishes back-to-back,” Blaney said. “You kind of start realizing like, ‘Man, this is just not going the way I thought it was going to go.’
“And whether it was things that we did. The Gateway thing was kind of just an unfortunate situation. Bristol ending the way it did stunk, and you start realizing like, ‘Man, it’s going to be really hard to make up those points now,’ and this is your season. This is what we’re racing for, so I think all of those just kind of built.”
Hocevar says he hopes they can talk this weekend because he believes they have a lot to bond over.
“For me, I’ve watched the sport all my life, and these tend to be the things that bring people together and then you laugh about it,” Hocevar said. “I’ve never had a problem really with him on a racetrack and we’ve been running good.
“I think he’s as stand-up of guy and I hope he could look at it and know it’s just racing and heat of the moment, and every driver is going to be biased towards themselves. In time, maybe you look at things differently. In the heat of the moment, it’s just heat of the moment.”
To that point, Blaney said he isn’t going to change how he races Hocevar, and that they hadn’t had a problem for nearly two years before this weekend.
“I feel like we have raced each other pretty good, so I don’t think there will be really anything different than racing hard in tough moments per usual,” Blaney said. “But that’s with anyone in certain moments of the race, so I don’t see a big change.”
Late race ethics
Ultimately, Hocevar tends to draw the most ire from his peers for not lifting when conventional ethics tend to suggest he should.
At the same time, this incident occurred late in the Bristol Night Race, and they were racing for second place when a caution at any time could have changed their chances to win.
“Everyone is different,” Blaney said. “Everyone has a different code – every single driver in the garage. I feel like in that situation I said before it was pretty 50-50 why the contact was there, but I wouldn’t have been, I think a lot of guys in that spot that if someone wasn’t happy with the block or something like that that was pulled of, just run into me in the middle of the corner and move me up two or three lanes and get the spot back and then we’ll go at it again.
“I think me kind of getting destroyed was something that kind of fueled me a little bit more, but, like I said, everyone is different. People brought up the Joey (Logano) and Christopher Bell thing that was kind of similar somewhat and that’s how Joey approached it, so everyone is different of what they think is fair or foul or just how they race. It’s the decisions that were made.”
Hocevar said he has tried to be more thoughtful in picking and choosing his moments. With that said, he was racing for the win late in the race, and Blaney did make the decision to shade down.
“This car loves defensive moves,” Hocevar said. “You can aero block and do everything you can. Sometimes you just have to blitz and see if you can make some aggressive moves to catch the quarterback off guard per se; and that’s kind of my code, hypothetically.
“For me, I gladly point people by, especially the ones that I have dumped in the past, but I get pointed by a lot too.”
Will they talk?
“I haven’t seen him yet today,” Hocevar said. “But I think we’re all hiding from the rain more than anything. But no, we’ve been cool and stuff. I bought a tank and he likes that stuff, so maybe we can bond over it a little bit.”
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