Trackin’ Trucks: Carson Hocevar Wins at Texas

 

Credit: James Gilbert

Carson Hocevar earned his sixth career Craftsman Truck Series victory on Friday at Texas Motor Speedway, leading a race-high 76 laps toward the overtime win.

Giovanni Ruggiero led the overtime restart, but Hocevar went three wide on the final lap while Ruggerio's No. 17 Toyota got loose, shuffling him back to finish in 14th position.

Hocevar bested teammate Kyle Busch by 0.730 seconds at the track that gave the young driver his first series victory three years ago. Busch and Hocevar finished 1-2 earlier this season at Atlanta's EchoPark Speedway. In addition, Busch has won his last four Truck Series starts in Texas (2024, 2020, 2019, 2014).

“It’s unbelievable - what a fun race,” Hocevar said. “We had to reverse the order, obviously the 1-2 with Kyle. I watched him win a lot of truck races, and it’s finally good to put an end to his Texas streak.”

The win comes just one week after Hocevar's first career NASCAR Cup Series victory at Talladega Superspeedway.

An early scrape of the outside wall put a dent into Busch's hopes of securing another win at the 1.5-mile track.

“We had an eventful night,” Busch said. “We didn‘t start off very well. We were really, really loose and made a lot of adjustments to get it close. When we put the last set off tires on, we were really fast, felt really good.

“I was struggling with grip all night long, but (crew chief) Brian (Pattie) and the guys made a lot of good calls to get us dialed back in. It would have been nice to be in Victory Lane, but it's good to have a teammate in there and have him get his shot. I got one, he got one, so now we‘re even there.”

Kaden Honeycutt finished third, while Brandon Jones and Ben Rhodes rounded out the top-five finishers. Rhodes led 41 laps and secured the stage 1 win in the SpeedyCash.com 250.

Layne Riggs finished sixth, Daniel Hemric seventh, while Christian Eckes, Ty Majeski, and Chandler Smith finished eighth through 10th place, respectively.

A Look Ahead

The Craftsman Truck Series heads to Watkins Glen International next Friday, May 8th.

Honeycutt’s third place finish pushed him to the top of the series standings, 14 points over Smith. Riggs is 19 points behind Smith, while Ruggiero and Rhodes are fourth and fifth in the standings.

Watch the Trucks turn both left and right May 8th at 4:30 p.m. ET on FOX Sports 1.