Carson Hocevar confused by anger of Brad Keselowski during Watkins Glen qualifying

Carson Hocevar broke his silence on his confrontation with Brad Keselowski during Watkins Glen qualifying this past weekend. During his media session (per Jeff Gluck of The Athletic), Hocevar said he isn’t sure why Keselowski was upset with him in qualifying, because Hocevar was upset with Keselowski first.

“Hocevar felt Keselowski impeded his qualifying lap first by letting him go in a bad spot,” Gluck wrote on X/Twitter. “So in his mind, he repaid the favor by ‘staying in line and had him go around me’ on the cool-down lap with Keselowski on his flying lap, though he acknowledged ’emotions were high.’

Video footage of the incident was released before the Cup Series race on Sunday. While speaking with TNT Sports, Brad Keselowski explained why he was so upset with Carson Hocevar.

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“On the track, I was just trying to get out of Carson’s way, but then Carson thought I had blocked him,” Keselowski said. Hocevar then slowed down in front of Keselowski while the veteran driver was doing his qualifying lap, which he didn’t appreciate. The video showed Keselowski sprinting towards Hocevar after returning to pit road.

It’s been an interesting year for Hocevar, who is in his second season as a full-time Cup Series driver. Along with Keselowski, Hocevar has had incidents with Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Zane Smith and his Spire Motorsports teammate Michael McDowell.

On Dale Jr. Download, Dale Earnhardt Jr. talked about what could happen to Hocevar if he runs to a car from Rick Henrdick Motorsports. “We said this months and months ago — everything’s fine until he runs into one of Rick’s cars or something like that and he has to go into the office and talk to Rick Hendrick. It might not be Rick, but it’ll be a person like Rick that when he has to go in and have that conversation, that will have an effect. That might not fix it all, but that will have an effect on the decision-making behind the wheel,” Earnhardt said. “I’m entertained by Hocevar until it becomes my problem. I think it’s all fine until he does something that irks Hendrick. Or somebody that’s directly above his chain of command.”

On3’s Nick Geddes contributed to this story.