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Carson Hocevar Misses Corner In Chicago Street Race, Triggers Massive Early Pileup

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
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Carson Hocevar

It took all of four laps for total chaos to erupt in Sunday’s Chicago Street Race.

And multiple NASCAR Cup Series drivers and their teams paid the price.

So, what happened that transformed the 12-turn, 2.2-mile Chicago Street Course into something that resembled a demolition derby?

Carson Hocevar Loses Control Of Chevy, Sets Huge Accident In Motion At Chicago Street Course

Young Carson Hocevar apparently is not done making enemies. After wrecking and angering Ricky Stenhouse Jr. multiple times in recent weeks, Hocevar was back to his familiar form in the opening laps of the Chicago Street Race.

Running alone on Lap 4, Hocevar found trouble when his No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet cut a corner too closely, brushing the inside wall of Turn 9. The contact shot the vehicle into the outside wall on the straight leading into Turn 10. Then, Hocevar came down across the track and slid back up into the outside wall again.

That’s when all heck broke loose.

Austin Dillon — who had nowhere to go on the ultra-narrow course — T-boned Hocevar in his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevy. Others then piled in from there. All told, six more drivers — Brad Keselowski, Daniel Suarez, Todd Gilliland, Riley Herbst, AJ Allmendinger and Australian Will Brown — got swallowed up in the mess, which forced NASCAR to throw the red flag for a nearly 15-minute cleanup.

“Just got too close to the barrier,” Hocevar said over his in-car radio, according to multiple posts on social media platform X. “I think the left-front suspension is torn completely off of it.”

Dillon, whose car likewise suffered a good amount of damage, was none too pleased with Hocevar.

“Carson Hocevar is THE biggest dumbass in the entire sport,” Dillon radioed to his team, according to multiple posts on X.

Chicago Street Race Melee Carries Major Implications For Multiple Drivers

After entering the Chicago Street Race within striking distance of the NASCAR Cup Series playoff cutline, Carson Hocevar took a major points hits with his mishap on Sunday.

With only seven races now left before the full 16-driver playoff field is locked in, Hocevar will almost certainly need to win a race to punch a playoff ticket. Coming into the day, the 22-year-old Michigan native trailed bubble driver Bubba Wallace by 62 points — a large but not insurmountable gap.

Keselowski, meanwhile, already needed a win to secure a playoff berth. That remains the case moving forward, after the RFK Racing co-owner/driver couldn’t react quickly enough to avoid the collision between Hocevar and Austin Dillon on the Chicago streets.

“I didn’t see it until the last second,” said Keselowski, the 2012 NASCAR Cup Series champion. “I slowed down, and I actually felt I was gonna get stopped. And then I just kind of got ran over from behind. It’s just a narrow street course. And, sometimes, there’s nowhere to go.”

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
Jared Turner is a motorsports writer who has covered NASCAR for 20 years. He has interviewed over 20 NASCAR Hall of Famers and around 100 drivers, crew chiefs, and team owners, both past and present. He has also covered the sport for FOX Sports (where he was a two-time recipient of the FOX “X” Award for “Xtraordinary” job performance), NASCAR.com, Sporting News, NASCAR Pole Position Magazine, the SPEED network, and plenty of other online and print-only publications throughout his career. Notably, Jared has penned dozens of articles for NASCAR souvenir programs, including several featured prominently in Daytona 500 keepsakes. A Virginia Press Association award winner and former member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Jared has racked up accolades both for his writing and his academic work. He studied both Communication and Psychology at Virginia Tech, where he was permanently enshrined in Phi Beta Kappa — the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society. Jared excels at feature writing and opinion writing, much of which stems from his dedication to all levels of racing.
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