Mark Martin and Jeremy Mayfield did not beat around the bush when they explained why it is going to be a lot more difficult for Carson Hocevar to win the NASCAR Cup Series Championship based on the decisions he has made on the track.

During an appearance on Dirty Mo Overdrive, Martin shared his thoughts on both the on-track wreck between Hocevar and Ryan Blaney as well as the post-race fight. That wreck took place with less than 50 laps to go in the race and saw Ryan Blaney and Carson Hocevar battling for second place. Blaney was able to get around Hocevar and take the position. As he went to secure the position Hocevar attempted a crossover and got into the rear of Blaney and sent him spinning into the outside wall.

HURRICANE HOCEVAR MAKES LANDFALL IN BRISTOL 🫨🫨

📺📱 : @USANetwork pic.twitter.com/dC5XYMHRS6

— NASCAR on USA (@NASCARonUSA) September 20, 2026

Martin shared that Hocevar’s decision to stay in the gas and not lift and take Blaney out makes it that much more difficult to win the Championship.

“I think when it comes to Carson, he’s going to have a lot more difficult time winning this Championship this year than Joey Logano for that very reason,” he said. “You make choices on the race track. You choose when it’s worth it. You weigh when is it worth it? When is it not worth it? Tangling with Brad [Keselowski] for 20th place at Darlington probably wasn’t worth it. I know Carson didn’t intend for Brad to wreck, but still he knew he was going to hit him.”

“And that’s going to present challenges for Carson in the future,” Martin elaborated. “You have a lot of drivers that are pulling to see Carson get some of his own medicine and more.”

Martin was not the only one to express such an opinion. Jeremy Mayfield shared a similar one as well on The Jeremy Mayfield Show.

He said, “The thing I’ve been thinking about through all of this is what the big picture look like here? And I’ve said this before, the easy thing to do is don’t give a guy a break and spin him out. I mean, you could do that. Anybody out here could do that especially in that situation there. The guy passed you and he’s come back down and you just get into him for no reason. There was nothing to gain there. Obviously, at the end of the night, he gained a spot, but that’s not the way you got to look at this thing. You got to look at the big picture.”

From there, Mayfield shared that Hocevar’s mentality at the way he looks at NASCAR is not the way to do it, “What won’t help him is when he gets the feeling that everything he’s doing is perfect, everything he’s doing is right. That’s what he’s being told, and that’s what his mentality is. That deal the other night, they got into it, and the crowd’s loving it, and he’s looking up at the monitor at himself watching it, and everything’s great. And I’m sure it was great.”

“What he doesn’t realize, it’s not just about him and Brad Keselowski. It’s not just about him and Blaney. Him and whoever else he’s been into it with all year. There’s been a bunch of them. It’s not just about them,” he continued. “Because here’s what’s going to happen. Everybody that works for Penske, over at their race shop, and that’s a pretty big organization, it’s about as big or bigger than anybody’s out there. They got a lot of people that work there. They work hard to build their cars right and give their drivers the best they can get every week. Now, that you’ve wrecked one of their cars, you wrecked their driver. And that’s all fun and games when they’re punching on each other, throwing down all that. It’s all great. But those guys back at the shop and those guys on pit road that pit that car and work on it, and build it, and everything else—. … Those guys work extra hard and they get bonuses for wins and championships. … Now, you’ve taken money out of their pockets by what you did the other night.”

New week, same old Carson Hocevar. This time Brad Keselowski is the victim.

Tyler Reddick will take the first stage at Darlington as a result.@AlwaysRaceDay pic.twitter.com/ifyF6GCOvs

— Mr Matthew CFB (@MrMatthewCFB) September 6, 2026

“Like I said, short term, you’re great. Look, all is good for TV, great for NASCAR, or whatever. The long term, you just pissed a bunch of people off. It’s not just Ryan Blaney. It’s everybody in his organization that’s pissed. That’s the way it is. When you go racing, you don’t give two [craps] about your race team and what you got going on there, but you don’t do anything stupid to jeopardize what you do have going on there. And I’m the first to tell you that. I learned the hard way. And Carson’s going to learn the hard way.”

Mayfield then pointed out that Hocevar has not just pissed off Team Penske with his actions at Bristol, but he pissed off RFK Racing as well when he dumped Brad Keselowski at Darlington. 

“When that happens two or three more times and two or three different race teams like that, I’m just afraid it’s not going to end well. … But the way I see it if you keep pissing so many people off, you’re going to find yourself in trouble.”

“There’s going to be drivers out there that are going to wreck him. And they’re going to race him just like he races them. I promise you Ryan Blaney will race him just like’s racing him. Brad will race him just like he races him. So, see, the list keeps getting bigger of what he’s doing.”

“He may win the Championship, who knows? Maybe he will. But I bet you there’s some drivers out there, they’re going to make sure if he does, he does it the hard way. He’s going to do it the hard way because they’re going to end up tearing his cars up like he did theirs,” Mayfield said.

Interestingly, to their points Joey Logano, won the race at Bristol, said the reason why Hocevar did not win was due to his reputation and the fact that he had pissed people off, specifically Ty Gibbs in this instance.

Logano told Eric Estepp, “Hocevar probably wins that race if he doesn’t have the reputation he has. I feel like that’s a fact. Ty Gibbs went in there and straight up punted him. Why? I’d assume it’s different if it’s somebody else. And he pry would have won that race, but because of the past, Ty decided to make a move where he was going to rough him up to try to win the race himself. And I was just the person that took advantage of it, right? I was there. Right place, right time, and snuck around it.”

Earlier in the episode, Logano explained why he did not make a similar move on Christopher Bell to the one Carson Hocevar made on Ryan Blaney.

“It’s a very similar situation to the 12 and the 77. There’s two different ways you can play those cards. I had all the ability there to completely dump the 20 if I chose to. But again, it depends on who you’re racing. If that was somebody that I had a beef with, they’re getting backed in. ‘You had it coming,’ is what I would say. If you’re going to chop me like that, you’re exposing yourself, but I’ve never had an issue with Christopher Bell. We’ve always raced each other clean. We’ve always raced each other hard, but clean.”

“Was it an aggressive move on his part? Sure. Did I choose not to make an enemy on a situation like that? Yeah. I thought, ‘You know what? We probably need to live to race another day.’ It’s just thinking of that stuff in the moment. And it’s hard to do in the moment because you’re racing the heck out of each other for the win at Bristol,” Logano said.

“But at that time, you got to think big picture. And what is big picture? Winning the championship,” he elaborated. “That’s all I care about. And how do you do that? And there’s a lot that goes into that equation do it. It’s not just getting the best finish of that day. You got to think what makes you the best finishes of the next eight races, or seven races, or six races, whatever it is. How do I make sure that I get the most out of the rest of them and I don’t have someone gunning at me? That’s key.”