Driver: Carson Hocevar
Number: 77
Team: Spire Motorsports
Manufacturer: Chevrolet
Crew Chief: Luke Lambert
Series: NASCAR Cup Series
Age: 23
From: Michigan
Height: 6 feet, 4 inches
2026 Season Notes
Hocevar is in his third season as the full-time driver of the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, paired with crew chief Luke Lambert. The 2026 Cup season is the one that delivered the breakthrough — his first career Cup Series win at Talladega Superspeedway on April 26 in the Jack Link's 500.
The Talladega Win — His 91st Cup Start
Hocevar took the checkered flag at Talladega by 0.114 seconds over RFK Racing's Chris Buescher in his 91st career Cup Series start. The win locked him into the 2026 All-Star Race at Dover (where he raced as a Cup regular, not as one of the open-entry qualifiers).
The celebration earned its own coverage. Hocevar pulled to the apron, positioned his 6-foot-4 frame on the edge of the driver-side door, removed the steering wheel, dropped the clutch, quickly reattached the wheel, found the throttle, and made a slow door-perched victory pass along the main straight in the No. 77.
Career Path
Hocevar made his Cup debut in 2023 at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway — substituting in Spire's No. 7 Chevrolet when Corey LaJoie was promoted into Hendrick Motorsports' No. 9 to fill in for a suspended Chase Elliott. He became Spire's No. 77 full-time driver the following season and won the 2024 Cup Series Rookie of the Year.
Career Stats
Stat
Value
Cup Series wins
1 (Talladega, April 26, 2026 — his 91st career start)
Cup Series career
Third full season (2024 ROY, 2025, 2026) — plus the 2023 substitute debut at Gateway
Draft profile. Hometown city and a fully populated recent-coverage list pending on the next refresh. Hero image pending — strong Talladega victory candidate exists in NASCAR.com archive.
Ryan Blaney led 171 of 263 laps, kept handing the lead back to the pack, and took it for good in overtime to win a rain-delayed Quaker State 400 at Atlanta's EchoPark Speedway. It was his second win of 2026, Ford's 750th in Cup, and it moved him to third in the championship.
NASCAR's Cup Series returns to Chicagoland Speedway on Sunday for the first time since 2019, a 2,562-day gap. The eero 400 caps a three-day holiday weekend at the Joliet oval and lands in a regular-season points race that Denny Hamlin, after a six-race surge, now leads by a single point over Tyler Reddick.
NASCAR and the Rolling Stones announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration this week: co-branded merch, two collector vinyl pressings of the new album Foreign Tongues, and a listening-lounge show car touring Chicago. It reads like a cash grab. The idea underneath it is real.
Denny Hamlin drove from the rear of the field to win the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan for the second straight week, his 63rd career Cup win tying the late Kyle Busch for ninth all-time. He honored Busch with an 18-8 tribute flag, and with points leader Tyler Reddick wrecked out for his first DNF, cut the title gap to 51.
Denny Hamlin was the last car out at Michigan — an hour after a practice tire failure sent his crew scrambling to rebuild the bottom of the car — and ran 195.117 mph to win the pole for Sunday's FireKeepers Casino 400, the 50th of his Cup career. He edged Michigan native Carson Hocevar by .018 of a second. Toyota took four of the top five; Ford's best qualified 14th.
Cleetus McFarland — 4.75 million YouTube subscribers and a real racing résumé — is pulling double duty at Michigan on Saturday: grand marshal and driver in the No. 4 Niece Motorsports truck. John Speedway on the most fun entry of the Truck Series weekend.
Spire Motorsports' fifth-annual Spring Fan Day runs Thursday, May 21, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. at the team's Mooresville HQ (351 Mazeppa Road). Autograph wristbands for Suárez, McDowell, Hocevar, Kyle Busch, and Mosack distributed first-come-first-served starting 8 a.m. 25% of the day's proceeds benefit the USO. A four-grandstand-tickets raffle for the Coca-Cola 600 also benefits the USO.
Kaden Honeycutt won his first NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race Friday at Watkins Glen — and did it by beating Connor Zilisch and Shane van Gisbergen, the two drivers who have dominated NASCAR road courses for two years. He also won the ARCA race at the same track earlier the same day, becoming the second driver in history to sweep both. Honeycutt now leads the Truck Series championship by 29 points.
Carson Hocevar won the pole at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday in the Spire Motorsports No. 77, edging teammate Daniel Suárez by 0.003 seconds. It is the second pole of Hocevar's career, the second Spire car on the front row — and the third weekend in a row that Spire Motorsports, the Concord-based Cup team, has put a car in NASCAR's spotlight.
Corey Day won Talladega last Saturday by leading exactly one lap — the last one — for Hendrick Motorsports. Six days later, the same Concord-Mooresville pipeline runs at Texas, with Kyle Larson in the JR Motorsports No. 88, Connor Zilisch in the No. 1, and Austin Dillon in the Richard Childress No. 3. Three Cup drivers, the final Dash 4 Cash of 2026, and Justin Allgaier with a stage-points pace nobody has hit since Denny Hamlin in 2021.
Darius Rucker confirmed as co-owner of Legacy Motor Club on the Dan Patrick Show. Plus: O'Reilly Series posts its biggest Darlington audience in seven years, Denny Hamlin signals Tyler Reddick's contract extension is imminent, and the Cup Series heads to Martinsville.
Tyler Reddick won the Goodyear 400 at Darlington from the pole for his fourth Cup victory in six 2026 races, beating Brad Keselowski by 5.8 seconds despite cool shirt and electrical issues. Michael Jordan's 23XI Racing now has four of the first six wins this season.
Friday night at Darlington, Carson Hocevar charged to the lead and lost it to a blown tire with four laps to go. Sunday he goes back out in Dale Earnhardt's 1981 Wrangler colors. That's not a comparison. That's just guts.
Corey Heim chose to restart ninth in double overtime at Darlington, then drove to the front on the last corner to beat Ross Chastain and win the CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race. The 23XI development driver is making the case for a full-time Cup ride in 2027.