“Made A Buffoon Out of Himself”: Kevin Harvick Criticizes Cup Series’ Rookie of The Year’s Reckless Antics

Earlier, the NASCAR Cup race at the Martinsville Speedway concluded. By the end of it, Ryan Blaney won his way into the final four. Meanwhile, William Byron was the final contender, though the circumstances were hugely controversial. However, one story that may fly under the radar, refers to Spire Motorsports rookie Carson Hocevar. The young driver is no stranger to flying on NASCAR's radar for his on-track aggression, and Kevin Harvick has something to say about it.

In an episode of his podcast, Kevin Harvick touched upon the #77 driver's antics, and he was far from impressed.

Kevin Harvick loved the race's aggressive nature but had reservations Let's be perfectly honest: The 21-year-old was an absolute menace on the track. On multiple occasions at Martinsville, he punted out several drivers during the race. Among his most notable victims were Harrison Burton, Todd Gilliland, and Daniel Hemric. Most of the incidents stemmed from Hocevar wildly lunging down the inside before spinning the car ahead. With Gilliland and Hemric, it was a two-for-the-price-of-one package deal. Hemric was the primary victim, while the unsuspecting Gilliland happened to be on the outside of the #31 car. Most of the time, this happened because Hocevar carried too much speed into the corner and used a rival as a makeshift brace.

Kevin Harvick mentioned on his podcast , "Goodyear brought a new tyre. They brought the soft tyre that they used as the option tyre for a couple of races. Brought that as the primary tyre this week. To see the race, how it unfolded, I loved the aggression. I loved the fact that everybody was aggressive. The only guy who made a buffoon out of himself was the #77. He was kind of running over everybody. It was rough, tough, and when you see everybody racing that way. Kind of gives you that feeling of intensity that comes with that event. You could just feel it, from watching the television."

Normally, NASCAR's short track package gets a lot of stick for producing dull racing. However, the racing product at Martinsville was anything but dull. Admittedly, one contributing factor could have been the fact that this was the penultimate race of the season. More importantly, this was the last chance for the remaining Playoff drivers to enter the Championship 4. As such, everyone knew that the tempo would be turned up tenfold.

Additionally, there were a lot of drivers who were trying to end their 2024 season on a high note. One of them was Hocevar, but the way he went about it was not a point in his favor. Frankly, one really should have seen it coming, because Hocevar is notorious for having multiple incidents and wrecks.

Will Carson Hocevar ever clean up his act? The truth is, many hope that he can do it. He is still young, so there is time for him to grow and learn from his mistakes. That being said, Carson Hocevar has been getting caught up in one too many incidents. Earlier this year, he and Burton tangled at the Nashville Superspeedway. What made the situation worse was that the incident happened while under caution. Safe to say, NASCAR did not take that too kindly, fined Hocevar $50,000, and docked 25 points.

While there were no incidents after it for a while, his tangle with Burton at Martinsville had another NASCAR driver jumping into the conversation. It was none other than Jeff Burton. In response to the incident at Martinsville, Jeff Burton issued a warning. "It's just uncalled for. It's just unnecessary. And Carson — this is the problem, if he can't fix this, he will not be successful in the sport. They're not going to let him be successful. I think people have been pretty patient with him."

Even before that, he had built up a reputation for such wild antics. This reputation stemmed from the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Among his worst offenses has to be, intentionally spinning himself twice to bring out a caution flag, and intentionally wrecked Colby Howard in 2022 and Taylor Gray in 2023. The incident with Gray was so egregious that he was slapped with a two-lap penalty.

Since it appears that Hocevar is continuing his rash actions in the Cup Series, it is not a good look. Especially considering that Spire Motorsports is retaining his services for the 2025 NASCAR Cup season.