Kevin Harvick sends strong message to Carson Hocevar after latest Ricky Stenhouse Jr. dust-up

Carson Hocevar and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. looked to have patched things up after their on-track run-in two weeks ago at Nashville Superspeedway. The two drivers spoke ahead of last week’s race at Michigan International Speedway and Stenhouse said he didn’t want to create a rivalry with Hocevar.

Then came Sunday’s race at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City. Hocevar, one lap down at the time, dumped Stenhouse on Lap 90 of 100. Stenhouse had enough, telling the Spire Motorsports driver, “I’m going to beat your ass.”

These types of issues with fellow drivers have been a normal occurrence for Hocevar in his brief NASCAR Cup Series tenure. Kevin Harvick said on Tuesday’s “Happy Hour” podcast that it’s time for Hocevar to develop some “common sense” on the racetrack. Harvick isn’t convinced Hocevar is “wired to figure that part out.”

“It’s been a pretty one-way street as far as these incidents are working out,” Harvick said. “That means Hocevar into the bumper of Stenhouse, and I think Ricky had had enough. Hocevar was a lap down and that’s really the part Carson has to get better at. He has to have some common sense about the scenarios he’s dealing with because it’s going to be a day he’s leading the race and going to lap Stenhouse, and Stenhouse is going to wipe his ass out. That’s how these things work.

“Carson’s got the speed, he just doesn’t have all the common sense that goes with dealing with on-track scenarios like this and not getting himself into them. You have to play the politics of Cup racing. You can say you don’t care about it, but it will handle itself if you don’t care about it. … He definitely hasn’t figured that out yet. I don’t know if he’s wired to figure that part out because he’s so wired to go full steam every lap. But there is a balance. Speed and brains have to factor together to win at Cup racing.”

Carson Hocevar explains incident with Ricky Stenhouse at Mexico City

This latest incident hurt for Stenhouse. After a P27 finish at Mexico City, he’s now 21st in the points standings, one point below Hocevar. The 22-year-old Hocevar did his best to explain what happened.

“I just got left and in the marbles and slid a lot longer than I expected,” Hocevar said. “So yeah, I mean, obviously number one, not somebody I would never want to hit again. But number two, just yeah, I wasn’t racing anything. I was just logging laps. Just trying to wait on a yellow and maybe see if we could put our day back together.

“But yeah, I just hit a curb wrong and got in the marbles and slid all the way through the corner. So, I tried to turn left and avoid him. But just really, really sloppy day by me. And then that was another incident of the day that was really just sloppy.”

That won’t matter to Stenhouse. He feels he’s been wronged twice by Hocevar. It should be interesting to see if Stenhouse follows through with his threat this weekend at Pocono Raceway.