With an 18th-place finish in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway, Carson Hocevar officially capped off his rookie season and secured the NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year Award.
RELATED: 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year Standings
Hocevar, who was proud of his season overall, was equally as proud of his final race of the 2024 season. The driver of the No. 77 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 says while the final rundown shows him with an 18th-place finish, he could have finished top-10 to top-15 had it not been for a late-race caution.
“Car was good today, right, which is what we care about most,” Hocevar said to TobyChristie.com. “You’re only as good as your last race. Yeah, it was good to finish on a strong note. The car ran [from] 10th to 12th. If the yellow doesn’t come out, yellow comes out, which kind of hurt us. But it’s fun to end ourselves on a good note, kind of where we, I think, would stack up.”
After what was a back-and-forth battle in the Rookie of the Year race for a good portion of the season against Stewart-Haas Racing’s Josh Berry, the Spire Motorsports driver was able to take charge over the final third of the season, and the final margin of victory in the Rookie of the Year point battle was 107 points.
While he suffered from some rocky moments early in the season, Hocevar feels that he and his team really showed what they were made of late in the season. Hocevar, who has Playoff aspirations for his Sophomore season in the NASCAR Cup Series next year says he and his team approached the final 10 races of the season as if they were battling for the championship.
“Yeah, it’s great. We kind of looked at this Playoffs as if we were in it, right? Let’s hold ourselves accountable. If we want to be a Playoff car, you can’t just show up next year and be like, alright now, we’re going to learn to race in the Playoffs. You’ve got to show up and hold yourself to that standard,” Hocevar said.
While he had many high water marks during the 2024 season, Hocevar says two races stand out the most to him as far as his top performances of the year.
“I’d say Homestead was our best race,” Hocevar noted. “Having a shot to win, Watkins Glen probably is going to be something I remember for a long time.”
As far as the low points of his rookie campaign, Hocevar, who only had two DNFs on the season, said it was mostly the missed opportunities early in the season.
“Our lowest lows were just at the beginning of the year. You know, just running good, and have an issue or have a pit penalty, or an issue on pit road, or an issue with our car, where we’d blow a tire and everything,” Hocevar admitted. “There’s a handful of spots where I can think there are five or six races, where there are 20 or 30 points. Adds up really quickly. I think being able to recognize that, and just minimize those, I think we put ourselves in the next caliber.”
Heading into year two of his NASCAR Cup Series career in 2025, Hocevar says the focus will be on obtaining Stage Points.
“To be better, I feel like we’re the best car that doesn’t get stage points right now. We’re the best car, the points kind of show that, right? Top-20 is guys that get Stage Points pretty consistently, guys that win races, and they have like a 50 to 100 point gap to me, and then there’s me, and then there’s a 100 point gap to the next guy. So, I’m kind of in my own island of just, I don’t get Stage Points to go be up with those guys,” Hocevar said. “But we finish well enough every week that we separate ourselves from the guys that don’t get Stage Points with us. That’s going to be the difference, is we just need to get Stage Points throughout the year. And our finishes I think are good enough, getting good enough. It’s just all the extra five, 10 15 points there.”
The 21-year-old Hocevar ended the season 21st in the NASCAR Cup Series driver standings, and he finished the year with one top-five finish, six top-10s, and an average finish of 18.3.
Hocevar bested Berry by 107 points in the Rookie of the Year battle, while Zane Smith was 181 points back in third, and Kaz Grala was fourth, 480 points behind. It’s worth noting that Grala only competed in 24 of the 36 races, while the other rookies competed in all 36 races this year.
