Fresh off of his first career NASCAR Cup Series victory at Talladega Superspeedway last week, Carson Hocevar followed it up with a win in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.
It’s Hocevar’s sixth career Truck Series win, and it comes at the same track and race at which he got his first career win in 2023.
Hocevar had to fend off the rest of the field on an overtime restart, and after a few trucks made contact racing for second on the final lap, the No. 77 scooted away to score the victory.
”It’s unbelievable,” Hocevar told FOX Sports 1 after the race. “Thank you everybody. This means a lot. I’m gonna go burn down Chili’s — I can’t leave, so we gotta go burn down a Chili’s here somewhere.”
Spire Motorsports teammate Kyle Busch finished second, followed by Kaden Honeycutt in third. Brandon Jones and polesitter Ben Rhodes completed the top five, respectively.
The first caution of the day came out on lap 25 when Cory Roper spun on the backstretch. It was the only caution stage one, which Rhodes led every lap of en route to the stage win.
Rhodes’ rookie teammate Cole Butcher brought out the second caution of the day on lap 52, when he snapped loose underneath teammate Jake Garcia and backed his No. 13 into the wall, ending the Canadian’s day.
On lap 72, Kris Wright lost a tire entering turn 3 and crashed to bring out the fourth caution of the day, the third for incident. Hocevar went on to take the stage two victory just barely holding off the TRICON Garage teammates of Honeycutt and Gio Ruggiero.
After nearly 60 laps of green flag racing and a round of green flag pit stops, Tyler Ankrum spun with just over 20 laps to go in regulation, which bunched the field back up again.
Hocevar, Busch and Honeycutt fought tooth and nail for the lead for several laps before the caution came back out again when Stewart Friesen crashed into the outside wall in turn 4. As he slid across the track, Grant Enfinger went through the grass to avoid him, but as a result destroyed his own truck after the splitter dug in.
This crash resulted in a red flag that lasted nearly nine minutes. Hocevar took the lead on the restart with six laps to go. However, the final caution came out with just three laps to go after a hard crash involving Conner Jones, Justin Haley, Tanner Gray, Garcia and Andres Perez. That caused NASCAR to throw a second red flag that lasted just over six minutes.
The first and only overtime restart saw Hocevar and Ruggiero remain side-by-side until Ruggiero got loose off of turn 4 coming to the white flag. As Hocevar ran off with the lead, Busch, Honeycutt and Ruggiero tried to settle second amongst themselves. The three made contact in turn 2, sending Ruggiero wide and giving Hocevar more than enough space to cruise to the win.
Hocevar’s 76 laps led was the most of any driver on the night.
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series now sets it sights on Watkins Glen International next Friday, May 8. Coverage for the Bully Hill Vineyards 176 starts at approximately 4:30 p.m., with FOX Sports 1 carrying television coverage.
Featured photo: NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series on Twitter/X.
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