Carson Hocevar 1-on-1: On his all-star Cameo campaign, rookie season

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Carson Hocevar has been in the spotlight over the past few years for good and bad reasons.

Most recently, it’s been good. His vote-for-me video for the all-star race where he fooled other drivers on Cameo to do videos in support of him went viral. Up until last week at Darlington, he was leading the NASCAR Cup Series rookie standings.

The Spire Motorsports driver, who has had his share of run-ins with other drivers in recent years, talked with FOX Sports over the past couple weeks about his season, the video, hoping to make the all-star race either through the two spots in the Open or the fan vote, sleeping at the race shop and a much more serious situation:

Your family is in Portage, Michigan, which got hit by a tornado earlier this month. Is everybody good?

For my family’s sake, everything was all good. The [family’s] store was obviously torn up … but the house was plenty fine. I called my mom and she was like, “Yeah, sun’s out, no big deal, just, good old fashioned tornado warning. And then she’s like, ‘Hold on your dad’s calling me. I’ll talk to you later.'” And all of a sudden, I got a call right back and my dad was in the store when it got hit. All the houses behind lost the roofs and lost their garages. So very thankful that it wasn’t any worse. Obviously, our roof was torn up, but luckily, it didn’t come off. And my dad was in there holding on to the door. We had a metal door there with no windows that he can kind of be sheltered.

Were there other people in the store?

No, he sent them all home at the start of the day, basically, just knowing that it was going to come through. He was still putting together everything and closing up and it kind of sped up and turned direction that obviously it was best not to be driving. Everybody just kind of started seeking shelter.

What type of store?

It was a coin and jewelry store. So, luckily, he had a metal door out back, Luckily, it was safe. All the other buildings next to it got really damaged. Ours kind of held up the best but it’s kind of brick. Obviously, windows were blown out, but it did its job.

On some more lighter things. Cameo. Do you have an active Cameo account? Are people asking you to do things? Have you been able to up your price?

I don’t have one, but I’ve considered it. But I feel like I would do it injustice. I’m so bad [with] time management, finding time that — I wouldn’t be able to probably give the [time]. I don’t know what I would say. I don’t know why anybody would want me to say anything. If enough people would ask me to do it, maybe I would consider it, but a lot of those guys that are on there are celebrities or actors. They just pretend to be the actor. It’s kind of funny to have a show that you’re the most popular, they’re playing that character. A race-car driver? I don’t know what character I play.

They’d ask you to wear a hat like you did in your truck series days?

Yes.

You don’t want to go back to wearing hats?

That was expensive. It did its job. It got me a lot more attention than I deserved as a rookie. But once we started running good, people already knew the name. It definitely did its job.

What did the drivers think about the video?

They still did get exposure. They had their face in front of a half-million views. So it’s not like they didn’t get exposure themselves. I think it worked out.

In the last week or so any more feedback from it? Anybody say anything to you about it?

It was funny. Austin [Dillon] got his dinner paid for and everything. It was all good fun. We want to get in the all-star race, but God forbid, we can’t get in it on raw speed, there’s obviously something we can work on and if we can get it through the fan vote, that’s a free race. You [typically] get 20 minutes of practice, and you don’t normally get a 200-lap race to work on these things and long pit stops in-between and breaks. That’s a lot of practice that I want to be able to take advantage of. If we can’t get in, there’s a reason we can’t get in. A team like us, any lap time we can take and me having fun and putting myself out there is a really easy price for me to pay. 

Just how big a deal would it be to make that race either way?

It’d be huge. We didn’t make the Clash. It was a bummer. We were really close. … Our short-track package. I don’t think it’s the greatest right now. That’s just a whole race of notes that we can put together and I don’t think Spire’s really been in the all-star race besides when they won at Daytona and they got to be in, but it was a lot different team back then. This year, we could probably up our ante and take advantage of it and hopefully be more competitive on the short tracks moving forward.

Spire President Doug Duchardt said that he once found you sleeping on the couch in the shop on a morning. Were you just too tired to drive home? 

I flew in the red eye from Vegas commercial because we went road course testing. We had flown [to the races from] Statesville so my truck was in Statesville, which had my car, which had my house keys and everything. And I’m like, Well I can either drive 45 minutes up to Statesville, drive down, probably get an hour worth a nap. Or I could just do all that later and spend three hours and get a nap. So that’s what I did.

How many times do you nap in the shop? 

I try not to make it very often. When I do sit down, it’s really easy for me to fall asleep anywhere. But that was moreso one, but I guess if you do it once, that’s just who you are. We’ve got a bed because we have a doctor’s room now. And they said they’re going to put together a blanket and pillows for me. I’m like, “Guys, I fell asleep here once. I don’t just live here.”

I assume you’re relatively pleased with the year so far? 

I am. I think we could be a few spots better in points, just a few different variables, Fishing 40th in the 500, that doesn’t help. That’s probably easy points that we could have gotten. Our teammates finished fourth and 10th, missing the big wreck. So that’s 20-30 points that we could have eventually got, which would have put us 18th in points. There’s a handful of different things. But all the other teams can say that, too, the what-ifs, if you had no penalties or you had no anything. We’re in a decent spot with some adversity that we’ve had to fight through — new team kind of gelling with new members, just trying to hit our strides on pit road, hit our strides in the race car, hit our strides in the spotter stand calling the race, and then just everywhere in between, we’ve started to figure out our notebook, starting to be able to really click here. 

And no real drama. So that has to be a plus. If you want drama, you want to be doing it for the win and not for 10th or 15th.

The most I wanted to be talked about this year was Monday, when they look at the results, and they’re like, “Damn, the 77 ran 15th last week, I didn’t even know it.” Which is hard for a driver to want to almost be irrelevant until Monday. But for us, that’s a good thing. Because most of the time they show on TV the top-5, and then the crashes and highlights and drama. And for us, it’s just about just clicking off laps, being able to be consistent, kind of be boring right now until we can run good and hopefully run up front. And then, obviously, intensity picks up. When you’re running 15th, you don’t want to be ruffling feathers back there because when you do get up there, they’ll ship you out because they what you’re capable of. So I’m just trying to keep my hands as clean as possible, get no blood on them and just be able to put together good runs because consistency is where we’re going to really shine and points and feel good about it every week. We’re just trying to get base hits right now as we kind of build this program.

They also do show Rookie of the Year points and you are leading (he lost the lead to Josh Berry after this interview at Darlington). Do you look at those?

We do. It’s just something. It’s a second thought. We want to finish top-20 in points. I think that would be huge for a rookie. Just looking back, almost every rookie finishes about 18-20th even in top-tier equipment. Spire is still trying to come into its own, we’re still trying to build it up and make it a front-runner or make it a top-half car. We have the same cars. It’s just we’re still hiring more people, new technologies, new processes, just trying to get everything in place. We’re not a key [Chevrolet] partner — I feel like we can still elevate our program without being a key partner. It’s just trying to do everything right to be in the top-20 and then Rookie of the Year.

You were able to work with crew chief Luke Lambert at Legacy and then have him come over to Spire. Just how much of that do you feel is attributable at all, if any, to the success you’ve had?

It’s big. It’s big with [spotter] Tyler Green too. He kind of drives a race car a lot of times. So it’s big to have a lot of trust from crew chief perspective and a spotter perspective. I look at it both as a win. Tyler, I never really had another spotter near as much as him and then, Luke, last year learning this car. There’s never finger-pointing for us. Me and Luke know we were capable of running really good last year and had some good runs. This year, as a rookie, it’s really easy to get to the point and say: I need to be better, I need to do this or I need to learn the car and I’m still really new. We don’t have a weak spot because me and Luke know we’re capable of doing it together. If we’re struggling at all, we know we are just OK, we can do this, we just we don’t have … our balance right. So it’s really easy to just have all our hands on deck and know that it’s OK. And there’s never finger–pointing. We’re just really a team that gels like that and working last year together really sped that up and is really rare for a rookie, which I think is at least a tip in our cap.

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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