Kevin Harvick offers pointed advice to Carson Hocevar after Atlanta dust ups

Carson Hocevar made an enemy out of NASCAR veterans Kyle Busch, Ryan Blaney and Ross Chastain during Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400 at Atlanta.

Hocevar, the reigning Cup Series Rookie of the Year, had incidents with all three on the racetrack, who took issue with his aggressive driving style. Kevin Harvick has seen it all during his more than two-decade career in motorsports and gave some advice to the 22-year-old Hocevar during his “Happy Hour” podcast.

Kevin Harvick gives advice to Carson Hocevar

“Keep standing on the gas, Carson. Keep standing on the gas,” Harvick said. “As long as you have shoulders big enough to take all the criticism and everything that comes with it, if you learn by standing on the gas and being up front, you’re gonna learn more anyway. You got to be willing to just take those chances and do the things that you have to do to try to win races. He was in position to try to win his first Cup race. Now, he made a big mistake with Blaney and got off center and spun him out. I didn’t see what exactly made Kyle Busch mad, but he was making aggressive moves all day and that’s what you have to do.

“You guys have heard me say this enough about this car; the aggressor is going to win nine times out of 10. He has a driving style that’s very aggressive, he’s not scared to put that car in places it shouldn’t be and take chances, and it’s bit him. It’s going to bite him and there’s going to be times when he’s got four or five guys mad at him after a race. There is no better way to learn. Why would you not want to learn being in the front and racing against the guys that are running up front?”

Ross Chastain, Ryan Blaney confront Carson Hocevar on pit road at Atlanta

Immediately after his runner-up finish, Hocevar was confronted by Chastain and later Blaney. Hocevar, who was going for his first career win in Cup, admitted there’s some stuff he needs to “clean up a little bit.” He did not, however, reveal anything pertaining to the pit road conversations with Chastain and Blaney.

“I’ll just leave those to myself,” Hocevar told Regan Smith of FOX Sports. “… I normally ride in the back, and it was trying to get a good, decent finish and for how bad we were at Daytona. … There’s some stuff I gotta clean up a little bit, but I feel like we put ourselves in the perfect opportunity to try to win a race. I’ve never had that opportunity really before — especially on a superspeedway.”

Harvick agrees with the idea that Hocevar needs to clean some things up. At the same time, the former Cup champion knows that aggressive style of racing can help him win races.

“He’s gonna take a lot of heat and he screwed a lot of things up, but he got out of the car and said, ‘Hey, I made some mistakes, and I messed some things up.’ If he can have big enough shoulders to not back up like they’ve done with Chastain here and there when they got on him for being aggressive. … You have to be able to balance all that and still be able to have that aggressive nature and make those aggressive moves, but you go to clean some of the mistakes up,” Harvick said. “You can’t keep making the same mistakes.

“I don’t think he’s going to do that, personally. I think he’s very talented, but I would advise you just block out the noise and keep that pedal down.”