The whispers started quietly. The sort of hushed garage chatter normally reserved for tire pressures and who forgot to fuel the golf cart.
Here was this tall kid from Michigan — the kind who, in high school, probably looked like he’d file your taxes rather than shove you into the lockers. And yet, when the helmet goes on, Carson Hocevar turns into something else entirely. Something loud. Something fearless. Something… inconvenient for everyone around him.
Before long, the comparisons began. Not shouted — that would be reckless. No, these were murmured. Carefully. Because comparing anyone to Dale Earnhardt Sr. is a bit like comparing your backyard barbecue to Mount Everest. Technically both involve heat, but only one leaves a permanent mark on history.
Hocevar hasn’t exactly run from the noise. He bought himself a street truck wrapped in the black-and-silver livery that made Earnhardt famous. And when he rolled into Darlington Raceway with a throwback Chevrolet painted to resemble one of Earnhardt’s old Pontiacs, the whispers turned into a low rumble. The NASCAR equivalent of distant thunder.
On Friday, though, Hocevar pushed back — not angrily, just with the weary shrug of a man who knows the narrative machine has already started printing T-shirts.
“I mean, I think I’ve hit enough people already (laughs). I don’t know… I’m just driving how I want to drive,” he said. “I don’t really love the comparisons of what they turn into. It started by just kind of not apologizing after running into people, basically, and just being really, really aggressive, to turning into kind of the ‘I’m as good as him’. I was like, I don’t know where that came from.”
“I’m just hoping I’m fast enough or we’re good enough that we can actually be up front and be relevant, especially with that scheme. But, yeah, I’m just me. I’ve been saying it for a long time. I like just being me. You know, it’s a lot easier that way for my sake. I don’t like to have to be anybody I’m not.”
Then came Sunday. After an unapproved adjustment sent him to the rear of the field, Hocevar spent the closing laps carving through traffic like a man who had somewhere very important to be. By the end, he’d muscled his way into the top five and claimed a career-best Darlington finish in fourth.
“It hasn’t been a lack of effort, but just a lack of luck that takes us out of finishes, so it’s nice to take one today,” he said. “Chili’s put a lot of effort into this throwback scheme, so it’s great to give it a good run.”
“I had fun. Our Chevy was good. It didn’t feel crazy different, but it seemed like it was way different for everyone else and we were able to pass a lot of cars. That was beneficial for us, for sure.”
And that, really, is where the comparison to Earnhardt begins to make sense — not in the paint scheme, not in the bravado, and certainly not in the mythology. It’s in the discomfort he creates.
Because the Intimidator didn’t become a legend by asking politely. He became one by arriving in your mirror, filling it completely, and then making you wonder whether you’d still have a fender by the next corner.
Hocevar isn’t there yet. Not even close. But on days like Sunday, slicing forward with elbows out and consequences be damned, you can almost hear the ghosts of NASCAR past clearing their throats and saying, “Well now… this could get interesting.”
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.