- Carson Hocevar says the tow truck driver who hauled his wrecked No. 77 back to the garage at 45 mph “was a massive MVP”, per Motorsport.com.
- The ride kept the Spire Motorsports driver on the lead lap under the red flag with five laps to go at Talladega, and he finished in the top ten.
- Hocevar wants the man’s name so he can send a couple hundred dollars or a gift card.
Four Flat Tires, One Thumbs Up and a Thank You Still Owed
“I need to find this tow truck guy’s name.”
Carson Hocevar said that in a recent live stream, and he meant it. The 23-year-old from Portage, Michigan, had spent the final minutes of last Sunday’s NASCAR Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway stuck on the backstretch with four flat tires and a wrecked car. A stranger in a tow truck got him back in the race.
Hocevar did not stop at the name. “I don’t know if it’s legal or not, but I was like, that dude needs a couple hundred bucks or something, or at least a gift card,” he said. Hocevar wants to change that.
The Wreck That Left the No. 77 Stranded
The trouble started with five laps to go. Hocevar was pushing Joey Logano in the outside lane when the two tangled in the tri-oval. Hocevar spun down the frontstretch as 15 cars piled together. Logano’s car went upside down, and the race was red-flagged immediately.
Hocevar tried to nurse his own car back toward pit road. It would not turn on four flat tires, and he came to a stop on the backstretch.
That is where he picked up the story in the live stream. “So, I’m like down the backstretch, right? I’m four flat tires, can’t go anywhere, I’m in the wall,” he said. He then described what normally follows a crash of that kind. “Normally, they come up to the door and they’re like, ‘are you okay, are you all right, what’s the plan, are you okay, do you need anything, what do you have?’ None of that was asked, nothing.”
The tow truck driver skipped the questions and went straight to the point.
Sixty Seconds From the Wall to the Garage
“All of a sudden the tow truck driver runs over,” Hocevar said. The driver told him he was going to keep him in the race. “I was like, ‘sounds good. Go.’ And he’s like, ‘all right.'”
The driver hooked up the No. 77 and had it rolling in roughly 60 seconds. The onboard camera on the No. 77 shows the ride, and the team commented on the radio. “He’s helping us out, he’s hauling ass,” the team said.
The truck went by Shane van Gisbergen and the rest of the parked field on its way back to the DVP area behind the wall. “He’s digging,” the team remarked as it watched the ride unfold.
Hocevar described the speed himself. “He takes off, gets in the truck, slams the door. And we start going 45mph on the tow truck. We pass cars that are trying to limp to pit road. We’re passing cars on the way to pit road.”
A Crew Request at the Garage Door
The ride had one more beat. When the driver started to drop the car back in the garage, Hocevar’s crew guys asked him for a favor. “hey can you pick it up real quick? Can you pick it up?” they said, in Hocevar’s telling. The driver lifted the car again so the crew could look at the damage, then set it down.
“The tow truck driver sets me back down and he’s just like this (thumbs up), I did good,” Hocevar said. “And I was like (thumbs up), yes, you did.”
NASCAR teams cannot work on cars under a red flag, and the Spire Motorsports crew still had plenty of time to prepare. The crew got the No. 77 ready to rejoin the race on the lead lap in 13th place, in time for the final restart.
In the final two-lap dash, Hocevar drove up to sixth and took a top ten finish. Drivers who dropped out of the same wreck finished anywhere from 24th to 34th.
Talladega Has Been Good to Him This Year
The finish came at a track where Hocevar already has a big result. Hocevar earned his first career Cup win at Talladega in April, in the Jack Link’s 500. He took the checkered flag at the end of 500 miles, with Chris Buescher second and Alex Bowman third. A Stage 2 melee that collected at least 25 cars shaped that race too, and 21 cars finished on the lead lap. Ryan Preece, who won Stage 1, crashed coming to the checkered flag, and Stage 2 winner Ross Chastain finished seventh.
The October race brought another wreck and another red flag. Hocevar left it with a top ten finish and a story to tell.
A Rivalry He Refuses to Feed
Hocevar’s relationship with another driver took a different shape this season. Zane Smith intentionally wrecked Hocevar at Chicagoland in July, and wrecked himself in the process. NASCAR called both drivers into the hauler at Atlanta afterward.
Mike Forde, NASCAR’s vice president of racing communications, described the message on Hauler Talk. “If you guys can’t figure it out, we will help you figure it out,” he said. “And they couldn’t figure it out.”
After the Phoenix Cup race, Smith ran into the back of Hocevar’s slowing car at over 130mph, and NASCAR fined him $50,000. Forde said the series was “serious about those conversations.” Dale Earnhardt Jr. also spoke out on his podcast. He called Smith “a cool dude” and noted that Smith and Hocevar both drove for JR Motorsports at one time. He said “you cannot do that” and that “you’re hitting a guy directly in the back of the race car at 130mph.”
NASCAR cited the speed Smith carried into the hit and the warning he had already received after Chicagoland when it set the fine. Smith also made pointed comments about Hocevar on a podcast over the summer, and Hocevar responded to the Chicagoland wreck with confusion about why Smith held such animosity toward him.
The earlier Phoenix run-in began with Ross Chastain bumping Hocevar into Turn 3. Hocevar skated into the corner and hit Smith and Josh Berry, a collision that cost all three a shot at a top ten finish. Smith’s team told him that Chastain started the contact. Smith answered with a profane reply that he did not care.
Hocevar gave his own view at Talladega, where he said the hit was “just unexpected.” He said he first thought he had run into somebody who stopped in front of him. Then he looked behind him and realized he had been hit. The moment reminded him of a day at Martinsville with Austin Dillon, when his cool box broke, hot air blew through the car and he ran into Dillon at around 5mph on the way to pit road. “I figured I did that again somehow,” Hocevar said. “But no, I mean it was a hard hit for sure.”
Asked whether he has talked or texted with Smith, Hocevar said no. He laughed and added: “It seems pretty one-sided to me a little bit. I don’t really care. Yeah, I don’t care.”
What Comes Next for the 77
Smith gets a chuckle and a flat “I don’t care.” The tow truck driver gets a thumbs up, a thank you on a live stream and a promise of cash or a gift card.
Hocevar is 23, won at Talladega in April and left a 15-car wreck there in October with a top ten finish. For the tow truck driver he has a plan: find the name, then pay him back.
