Rick Mast did not beat around the bush when he shared his thoughts about NASCAR Cup Series drivers complaining about Carson Hocevar week-in and week-out.
Mast appeared in place of Kenny Wallace on Dirty Mo Media’s Herm & Schrader show, where he bluntly said, “Everybody that they’re talking about, the drivers are [whining] about it and griping about it. Well, take care of the situation, man. Take care of the damn situation. This has gone on long enough. They’re all sitting there whining, moaning about it.”
“Well, finally, Blaney gets out and throws a punch, and hell, he got screwed up on that deal, but it’s still going on on the race track,” he continued. “So they got that part to deal with. The drivers [are] going to have to figure that out. They’re going to have to figure that out or just keep taking the blows every week from the guy. Just keep taking it. You figure it out and take care of it, or let—”
It is unclear exactly what Mast is advocating the drivers do when he says “take care of the situation,” but it appears he is advocating for on-track retaliation and drivers to at the very least run Hocevar into the wall or fence him.
And he’s not the only one who has made similar comments. Kevin Harvick shared on SPEED with Harvick and Buxton, “At some point, you have to stand up for yourself, as Blaney tried to do in this particular moment. And you hear a lot of guys talking about what they’re going to do, what they think of it, but they never do anything. At some point if you’re that fed up with it, you just got to wreck him. And you got to do it aggressively, and you got to stand behind it. That’s the thing that reaches to a boiling point.”
“Because right now, Hocevar’s got them all sucked into his game. And they’re all having to talk about Carson. They’re all having to talk about his driving style. And nobody’s doing anything about it on the race track,” he added.
“You saw the other drivers: Preece and Josh Berry kinda chirping at him after the race. At some point, you just have to do it, right? Like you have to be the one that takes control of the situation,” Harvick continued. “And you have to use him up in order to get that conversation between the two of you. That’s the approach I would take with the situation. It’s not an easy one, but that’s the only thing that usually gets those conversations to kind of build to a head to have the conversations to move forward and how you want to race each other.”
Kenny Wallace also posed a big question to the current NASCAR Cup Series field in his reaction to the on-track incident between Ryan Blaney and Hocevar and the following pit road fight.
“These drivers, they keep [whining] about him. Who’s going to wreck Carson Hocevar? Ain’t nobody wrecked him yet. He just keeps spinning everybody right out.”
Spire Motorsports co-owner Jeff Dickerson previously addressed competitors attempting to wreck or take out Carson Hocevar following Brad Keselowski’s comments that Hocevar’s time was coming at Darlington.
In an appearance on The Gluckcast, Dickerson first made it clear that he and Spire Motorsports do not want Hocevar consistently wrecking other drivers, “Do we want Carson running into people? No. No, we don’t. We don’t have a play sheet that includes, ‘Let’s run into anything including the wall let alone somebody else.'”
At the end of the interview, he was asked if he was worried about his cars getting junked due to a feud with Keselowski. Dickerson responded, “I don’t know. Maybe. Couple things here. I love Brad. I got a lot of respect for Brad. And congrats to them for having two cars in. And one of my favorite moments of the year is Ryan Preece’s win. What a money moment. I’m getting goose bumps thinking about it. I’ve got nothing but love for Brad and RFK. And I think they’re almost peers with us in a way. We’re all just trying to pierce into that top level consistently. We’re good enough to put cars into the playoffs, I don’t know that we’re good enough to win six races, or eight races, or whatever.”
He then shared what he wished Hocevar had said about Keselowski’s comments, “”We know what Brad was doing on Sunday. Brad knows we know what he was doing on Sunday.’ And Carson gave him 12 laps of getting out of his system whatever point he was trying to prove to Carson. I don’t know if everybody knows this, the 17 was behind us. Another Chase car. That’s just part of it. Carson doesn’t need to wreck anybody and shouldn’t touch anybody. But the way that those guys were racing for 12 laps, somebody was going to do something. By that I mean somebody was going to make a mistake. Brad’s sitting on his door going into the corner. We’re at Darlington. … You’re racing the race track. Carson, who everybody thinks doesn’t know what he’s doing out there, is letting everybody go except Ty Gibbs who did it the right way and just shipped him into the corner. He was just like, ‘Get the hell out of my way.’ And we’re just like, ‘Yeah, man, respect. Awesome.'”
“Brad can do whatever he wants. If Brad wants to sit on Carson’s door and try to suck him around then cool. If Brad wants to run the hell out of him, awesome. I don’t think Carson shies away from tough racing or hard racing. [Crap] happens.”
“We don’t want to get into a crashing cars contest,” Dickerson said. “They’ve got two cars in the Chase too. I mean what are we doing? He wants to dump Carson so then Carson goes and gets the 17? There’s all these unwritten rules out there. Chase guys, not Chase guys. Brad knows these rules. He wrote them. It’s just like if a non-Chase guy wants to do that, okay, then I guess whatever happens happens. But I can tell you if Carson’s going to get wrecked there’ll be a commensurate response.”
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