NASCAR to review Truck Series Championship incident between Carson Hocevar and Corey Heim
While Corey Heim has received a fine and a points reduction for his actions on track, the Carson Hocevar incident isn’t over. NASCAR is still going to look at the incidents that took place during last Friday’s Craftsman Truck Series championship.
Senior Vice President of Competition, Elton Sawyer, was disappointed with what happened. Everyone was. While the Truck Series is the third tier in NASCAR, it is one of the top three series for stock car racing in America.
Carson Hocevar and Corey Heim didn’t act very professionally on Friday.
“We’ll review today as far as follow-up with such as the 11 and the 42, as we would in any event,” Sawyer said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “It’s unfortunate that that race unfolded at the end the way it did. We hold all of our series, especially the national series drivers to a much higher standard than what we felt like was delivered on Friday night and we will dig into that deeper in the weeks to come on how we will make sure that never happens again.
“I will say, not to make excuses for those guys, some of them are young. They should know better at this point in their careers, as they come up through the ranks whether it’s go-karts or bandoleros or short track racing, I think what we did on Sunday and what we did on Saturday is the data point and the example that should be set for all racers across the country. That’s how you race for championships, with respect and dignity, showing your talent. It takes zero talent to just go in there and wreck people. Anybody can do that.”
NASCAR has to hold itself to a high standard. The Truck Series championship just wasn’t that.
Should Carson Hocevar and Corey Heim have been held a lap?
There is a lot of conversation around this topic. I think at this point, everyone agrees Carson Hocevar messed up. He was over-driving and being overly aggressive. Pushed once, that was fine. Pushed again, too much, spun Heim out.
At that point, it became a race between Grant Enfinger and Ben Rhodes. Enfinger had the upper hand and the race was winding down to the final three laps. Heim decides that is when he is going to get revenge. He pins Hocevar into the wall, caution comes out, overtime.
So, what should NASCAR have done? Denny Hamlin thinks that NASCAR should have sent Heim to the rear, and possibly others. His argument is that blatant wrecking like that should result in being sent to the rear or held for a lap or two.
Hamlin’s argument does make sense. NASCAR used to hold drivers for incidents like that. Even Dale Sr. found himself having to pull down pit road for wrecking drivers or overly aggressive driving.
At some point, NASCAR decided it was good for ratings. But, it’s only good to a point. When a Truck Series race starts at 10:30 PM EST and doesn’t end until 1:00 AM – that’s an issue. Hopefully, we don’t see anything like that for a long time, if ever, again.