As most of the garage looks forward to Michigan, for some, thoughts remain focused on a controversial incident at Nashville when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. went spinning off the nose of Carson Hocevar, suffering his first DNF of the season.

Stenhouse was obviously frustrated as he was inside the provisional playoff grid on points before the wreck, and as of Tuesday, he says Hocevar has not contacted him. For most drivers, this issue wouldn’t raise many eyebrows, but Hocevar has been ruffling feathers throughout the 2025 season. At Nashville, he went on to finish second, knocking on the door of his first NASCAR Cup Series victory.

Keeping the speed while smoothing out the edges

On SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Jeff Dickerson, who co-owns Hocevar’s No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, offered some insight into the issue. 

“Behind the wheel, he’s doing everything that we’ve asked of him,” said Dickerson.

“I don’t want to slow him down. I mean, we can’t slow him down. We feel like the whole series has kind of looked at us for a few years and been like, ‘what the hell are those guys doing over at Spire?’ Well, now we’re up there. So why would I want to slow that down?”

With that being said, Dickerson admitted that there are some things Hocevar can clean up behind the wheel, saying, “There are some things l’d like him to — maybe round out a couple of the edges. But I don’t want to slow him down. I don’t want him running into the #47 [Stenhouse] there. I want them to cut him a break and let him back in and, you know, kind of show that maturity. But when you look at it, you’re just like, man. I mean, he doesn’t have a ton of laps, you know, still in the Cup car. Over time, he’ll learn to — he’s got to get his nose out of there, not because it was something that he did ‘wrong.’ It was just, why go out of your way to make an enemy that you don’t need to?”

Dickerson went on to praise Stenhouse and the work Hyak Motorsports have done this year as a single-car effort, calling the driver of the #47 a “good friend.”

Hocevar talks about finding the right balance

Carson Hocevar, Spire Motorsports Chevrolet

Photo by: David Jensen / Getty Images

Fresh off of winning the Money in the Bank 150 super late model race, Hocevar joined SiriusXM NASCAR Radio on Wednesday, echoing the comments of his team boss.

“I look at Jeff [Dickerson] for not just race car advice, but, like, life advice and everything else in between,” said Hocevar. “So, like, he’s lived it. And he said so many times, I think he said on the DBC [Door Bumper Clear podcast], ‘you can figure it out on your timeline, or my timeline, and l’d like to do my timeline, because I think it’s going to be quicker.’ So yeah, we look, we’ve done it a lot.  We work a lot. Me, Tyler Green [spotter] and Luke Lambert [crew chief], we always sit down. We go through so much stuff.

“They give me all every info they can find, and we work nonstop about just our communication, how we can get better, how we can race others, how we can race ourselves, teammates, everything, right?

Hocevar says several “massive people in the sport” have reached out to him to help the 22-year-old on his journey. He repeated what Dickerson said about wanting to keep the same level of performance without angering as many people.

“We don’t want to change … you don’t want to change. And you know, lose our edge. But, as Jeff had told me multiple times, let’s just round the edges off and have less moments of that and more moments of passing the other 25 cars without hitting them.”

NASCAR now heads to Michigan — Hocevar’s home track. He will be competing in both the Truck and Cup Series races with Spire Motorsports.