Everyone in NASCAR has had something to say about Carson Hocevar this past week. Or maybe that is, everyone except Denny Hamlin.
The No. 77 car was at the center of attention after spinning Brad Keselowski at Darlington last weekend, and Hocevar only poured fuel on the fire with his casual dismissal of the contact.
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On his podcast Actions Detrimental, Hamlin did his best to run past the Hocevar part of the equation, saying, “You’re not going to get anything more from me. I’m not going to give him what he wants. I’m not going to give him the clip that he wants. Period.”
While he sidestepped directly commenting on the No. 77, Hamlin did have plenty to say about Hocevar’s team leadership at Spire.
“You want me to talk about Spire? I’ll talk about Spire,” Hamlin said. “There’s no adults in that room. Clearly. In that building. No adults. That’s my opinion. Because, how can you honestly think that’s what’s best for your company? If you’re running a serious organization? I think they’re unserious. Anything else?”
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On Thursday, Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson responded to Hamlin’s critique while appeared on Jeff Gluck’s podcast.
“I mean, where do I start? I don’t even know where to begin to unpack that,” Dickerson began. “We’re serious enough to sue, apparently.”
Dickerson was quick to point to the ongoing litigation between Spire and Joe Gibbs Racing, which relates back to the jump former JGR competition director Chris Gabehart made to Spire.
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“No sh*t Denny’s going to say something like that. What do you want me to say? They’re suing us.”
In the lawsuit, JGR alleges that Gabehart took trade secrets with him while leaving the team for Spire.
After that warm up, Dickerson got into what felt a bit like more planned remarks.
“If anybody thinks that I’m going to come onto this show and say Denny doesn’t know what he’s talking about, that’s not going to occur,” he began.
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“My first reaction wasn’t Denny doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Denny knows absolutely what he’s talking about. I took it as a warning. Because Denny knows what it looks like when you don’t confront things like this. We ended up with Chris because of things like this.”
Dickerson cited the intra-team dust-up at JGR last year that began when Hamlin expressed frustration with the driving of teammate Ty Gibbs.
“I want to put it backwards to last year with what happened at Loudon when their own situations internally came to a head, and he publicly challenged Gibbs. ‘Are you going to talk to him? Are you guys afraid to talk to him?’ That’s essentially what he’s saying to me. Are you guys going to talk to him or not? So, I’m not going to say Denny doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I think Denny’s got a PhD in this.”
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Dickerson then doubled down on this framing, arguing that the unity within Spire would not be broken.
“I’m not going to have what happened at JGR happen at Spire. And it hasn’t,” Dickerson said. “We talk about these things every week. We don’t put out a press release every time we talk with Carson or we discipline Carson on something.”
As with most things that relate back to Hocevar, reaction was split, with some fans online supporting Dickerson in his defiance, and others arguing that his response only proved Hamlin’s point further.
We’ll see how the drama plays out this weekend in Illinois.
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