Carson Hocevar 1-on-1: Lessons learned in 2024, what's next for NASCAR's Rookie of the Year

Back in April at Talladega, CBS Sports spoke to Carson Hocevar about his journey to becoming a full-time NASCAR Cup Series driver, specifically his quick ascent from playing with diecast cars and making his own YouTube channel for stop-motion races to racing at the highest level of his profession. At that point, Hocevar had been coming off his first top-10 finish at Texas Motor Speedway -- and as it turned out, much greater and more salient things were to come.

When the checkered flag flew this past Sunday at Phoenix and the season was brought to a close, Carson Hocevar was officially named the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year, earning him a permanent and prominent place in the record of the season that was. The 21-year-old from Portage, Mich. earned Rookie of the Year honors in convincing fashion, beating Josh Berry for the title by a whopping 107 points, and had virtually wrapped up the award in the final races of the season to the tune of one top five, six top 10s, a best finish of third at Watkins Glen and a 21st-place finish in the final Cup standings.

Speaking to CBS Sports again Monday, one day after securing top rookie honors, Hocevar expressed satisfaction in being able to take advantage of the one opportunity he'll have to be the best rookie driver in NASCAR, as well as his Spire Motorsports team being able to achieve the most realistic goal they had available to them.

"It's cool to have that. Nobody can take it away -- If we had no success tomorrow and I didn't race tomorrow, you have that as a lock, right? So it's nice to have that reward," Hocevar told CBS Sports. "I didn't win the Truck Rookie of the Year and obviously didn't run Xfinity full-time, so to do this, it's something that I can't race for the next year, right? So it's something we wanted to win because you can only go for Rookie of the Year once.

"So to be able to do that with our team, it gave us something we could win as well. It gave us something within realistic expectations. It was probably way farfetched to say we were gonna make the playoffs or win Year One by any means. So to win Rookie of the Year, that was definitely the most realistic expectation that we could set for ourselves and execute. So to be able to do that and be able to have a close battle between me and Josh mainly for the first half of the year, then when we really were able to hit our stride we were able to just take off with it, I think really showed the capability of our team the last half of the year and how good we can perform."

The foundation for this year's rookie campaign was laid during the 2023 season, when Hocevar -- at that point an emerging star in the Craftsman Truck Series -- was tabbed to drive the No. 7 for Spire Motorsports at Gateway as a fill-in for Corey LaJoie, who was subbing for Chase Elliott at Hendrick Motorsports following a one-race suspension. Hocevar impressed before a brake failure, then impressed even more late in the year when he was hired to drive the No. 42 for Legacy Motor Club and greatly elevated the performance of a team that had struggled enormously to that point.

At Legacy Motor Club, Hocevar was paired with crew chief Luke Lambert -- who he subsequently took with him to Spire Motorsports' No. 77 team, and who he now calls a "second dad."

"The biggest compliment I ever got was Erik Jones and Dave Elenz and Luke all saying that the best that company had ever ran was when I was able to come in there," Hocevar recalled. "That was the best their teams had worked together and it made the 43 go faster, it made the 42 go faster. i remember sitting on an airplane and asking everybody what their deal was. Asking Luke if he could come over, asking Phillip Bell (a Legacy Motor Club engineer now at JR Motorsports) if he could come over too just because of how well we were all working together right away. 

"There wasn't really one race that we were running outside the teens. We instantly ran super well, I thought, for the situation … You're kind of thrown into a deal to go just burn laps, and all of a sudden we were running really good. That was fun, but being able to have those 8-10 races together, I think it's very rare to have a rookie driver with a crew chief and the only experience they have going into their rookie Cup year is Cup experience together. 

"That was, I think, a really big sort of speedup of our learning curve and speedup of us. I knew we were gonna be in a really good spot and we were gonna be able to run good."

Perhaps the greatest testament to Hocevar's performance as a rookie was the way in which the No. 77 team improved with him behind the wheel. Between 2019 and 2023, Spire's No. 77 had only earned five top-10 finishes in its history. By Watkins Glen, Hocevar matched that mark then proceeded to exceed it with a ninth-place finish at Homestead, a race Hocevar pointed to as the best all-around for his team given they ran inside the top 10 among playoff drivers all day.

It was a night and day improvement from when the No. 77 finished 32nd in points the year prior, and one car owner Jeff Dickerson noted was an uncommonly fast one.

"I feel like we went through two or three years of progression where nobody expected anything from the 77, and then people were shocked to see the 77, and then people were not shocked anymore because they just expected us to be up there," Hocevar said. "And Jeff Dickerson told us that in our team party at Phoenix, and I thought that was the truest thing he could have said is we did all of that in one year."

Naturally, that sort of growth sets an expectation of continued improvement in 2025. But just as his race team stands to improve during the offseason, Hocevar has plenty to work on himself.

In his ascent to the Cup Series, Hocevar has earned a reputation for being especially aggressive behind the wheel, which is sometimes a destructive force. He played a part in multiple on-track incidents during the year, and was publicly criticized by his competitors several times. Following Nashville in June, Hocevar was fined $50,000 and docked 25 points for spinning out Harrison Burton under caution in a retaliatory move.

As a race fan growing up, Hocevar said he had made a pact to himself that if he ever reached the top levels of NASCAR, he would race as hard as he wanted the drivers he grew up watching to race. Actually reaching the Cup level, however, has taught him the need to temper that somewhat and race smarter.

"For me, I was breaking my own childhood promise to myself that if I got there I would race exactly how I would want to watch them on TV. But there's limits to that," Hocevar said. "It's just being able to balance that more. They've got to get comfortable around me too, and I feel like I have the respect of others, but it's a different type of respect.

"I feel like I've been able to put together full races. It's just being able to do that 36 weekends in a row and not have the one or two 'Oh, that was a rough day' or 'That was a dumb decision-making day' or 'That was a self-destruction day.' It's just minimizing those and having a full year. Which is sometimes impossible, but just limiting those blemishes throughout the year."

For now, until he gets the opportunity to put the lessons of his successful rookie campaign to practice in 2025, Hocevar shared that he'll be learning something else during the offseason. He'll be learning how to build a race car for the first time, as there is a brand new late model in the Spire Motorsports shop for him to put together.

"It's gonna be me and Jeff Dickerson's toy in the shop to go play with," Hocevar said. "He reminds us that it's good to have distractions. This Sunday stuff can be difficult, it can be stressful and everything, and he's so good with people and managing his race team and his employees. This is gonna be how we have zero expectations. 

"He knows we're gonna have expectations to make the playoffs. And that's gonna be very difficult ... so if we fall short of our goal, he still wants us to be able to have fun and have something that we can build and have no expectations. I'm really looking forward to that. There's nothing more I want to do than drive race cars, so once we get it built then we can go racing with it."