Spire Motorsports teammates Carson Hocevar and Daniel Suarez will lead the NASCAR Cup Series field to the green flag for the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Hocevar is quite the interesting personality, and has earned himself a mountain of new fans this year while also angering his competition with his hyper-aggressive style.
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Hocevar’s uniqueness extends to his post-race victory celebrations, as we saw when he earned his first Cup win at Talladega Superspeedway. He was hanging out of the driver window while driving the car down the frontstretch, and proceeded to do burnouts all while hanging out of the car.
At San Diego, he had another shot at a win, but got spun by eventual winner Corey Heim in the closing laps. Later, Hocevar revealed that he had another wild celebration planned. He was thinking about driving onto the interior of the active military base and during burnouts, and even considered jumping into the Pacific Ocean next to the aircraft carrier that overlooked the street course.
But what will he do if he wins at the hallowed grounds of Indianapolis?
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“I don’t know — I don’t think the track is longer, but the grandstands are a little longer, so I could find plenty of other stuff to do,” said Hocevar, who appeared to have some ideas but didn’t want to share. “I think it will just kind of come to me. I don’t want to say it out loud because I think Roger Penske would kill me if he knew some of the ideas I had. But also, too, there’s tradition here, so you’ve got to really watch yourself a little bit. But yeah, they were getting pumped up after qualifying, so I can’t imagine how loud they would be if we do win.”
Carson Kvapil got a taste of what happens when tradition is overlooked while celebrating on Saturday. He missed the directive to not perform a burnout across the bricks, before doing just that after earning his first-ever victory in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series.
Carson Hocevar, No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet
Carson Hocevar, No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet
Hocevar is making his third Brickyard 400 start this weekend, finishing 12th in 2024 and 10th in 2025. But now he has the pole position, and five previous pole-sitters have gone on to win this crown jewel race. Track position is paramount at the historic speedway, and Hocevar couldn’t be in a better spot to kick-off the 160-lap race.
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“Yeah, it’s just cool for me to get anything here (at Indianapolis Motor Speedway),” said Hocevar after securing pole. “If I was 20 years into my career and I hadn’t won anything in Indy, I’d look into a marathon or something, just so I could get an award here. It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s just really cool to get something here. I get to look out at the backstretch behind this media center here and there’s a parking lot with a bunch of rubber. That’s where I grew up racing quarter midgets. I have a few bricks from that, and now, I can cherish a pole award at least on my third time here. Hopefully, that can give us a good advantage for tomorrow. Anything here is super important, just because the prestige of this place really raises everybody’s intensity. Everybody’s trying here, if not a little bit more, because they know how much it means to everybody. Yeah, it’s super cool.”
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