NASCAR’s Mike Forde shared an explanation for why Zane Smith was fined $50,000 for retaliating against Carson Hocevar at Phoenix Raceway.
NASCAR announced that Smith was fined $50,000 for violating Section 10.5.2.5a of the NASCAR Rule Book. That rule states that “any violations compromising Event or participant safety will be addressed on a case-by-case basis with the highest level of seriousness.”
Officials also cited Section 4.4 of the rulebook which provides “general examples of behavior that may fall into certain Penalty levels.”
A penalty has been issued following this past weekend’s action at Phoenix Raceway. https://t.co/XaicwclrFz
— NASCAR Communications (@NASCAR_Comms) October 20, 2026
The penalty comes after Smith retaliated against Carson Hocevar by ramming into his rear end at high speed following the conclusion of the race on the cool down lap.
Smith’s in-car shows him accelerating past a number of competitors and slamming into the rear end of Hocevar.
Zane Smith hits Carson Hocevar on the cool down lap https://t.co/YeJ4guE4CE
— Michael Albright (@malbright81) October 18, 2026
The retaliation came after Hocevar got a bump from Ross Chastain and ran up into the rear of Smith. After he pulled into pit road Smith was informed by his team that Chastain shipped Hocevar up into him. He responded saying, “I don’t give a [crap].”
Full breakdown of Zane Smith ramming into Carson Hocevar after the checkered flag including the onboard from Ross Chastain’s car.
The corner before it looked like Hocevar crossed Chastain’s left front on exit and that it was very close. Can’t say definitively if that had anything to do with how Chastain raced Hocevar in the next corner or not.
— Steven Taranto (@STaranto92) October 18, 2026
Forde explained the penalty on the most recent episode of Hauler Talk, “The obvious question here, and fair question from our fans is, ‘Wait a second, last week at Charlotte Motor Speedway, similar instance happened on the race track between Michael McDowell and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., no penalties. And then this week we had something between Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar that did lead to a penalty. What’s the difference? Why is this happening? Is this another example of NASCAR being consistently inconsistent?'”
He then explained the difference, “P1 in the reasons why, and the number one reason why we penalized here is because we had a discussion with Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar. This happened after Chicagoland, after they had their dustup on the race track. We called both of them in at Atlanta. We don’t typically like talking about the conversations, what we tell those drivers in the hauler, but in this case I’ll give you a little piece of what was said. Pretty much the message was this, ‘If you guys can’t figure it out, we will help you figure it out.’ And they couldn’t figure it out. So this is us pretty much helping Zane Smith figure it out a little bit in the form of a $50,000 fine.”
“When we have drivers called into the hauler like that … we’re serious about the conversations and we want them to have some reasoning behind it. We just don’t want to check a box that says, ‘Okay, we did this thing for PR speak so that Mike Forde can say on Hauler Talk that they’re bringing in the drivers into the hauler and they’re doing something rather than just sort of turning a blind eye for this.’ I’ve said it before, John Probst, the next time he listens to Hauler Talk will probably be the first time. He doesn’t care what I say on this podcast, but he has these conversations along with Elton Sawyer and Brad Moran to try to keep some governing, law and order on the race track and to keep things somewhat—. We want aggressive. We want passion, but this one was a little bit different than that in our opinion largely because of the conversation we had and the ask that we felt was largely ignored.”
“That is some of the reasoning,” he concluded. “There are other parts and pieces that I need to hold until after the appeal, the respective appeal process. Let that play itself out and if there is no appeal then maybe we can get into it at a little bit later time if it’s still something fans are interested in. But that’s kind of the nuts and bolts of what I can say about the Zane Smith penalty.”
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