NASCAR star reacts to Carson Hocevar wrecking his playoff dream

Many NASCAR drivers have tangled with Carson Hocevar in 2025, and Austin Cindric became the latest man to pay a heavy price in Charlotte on Sunday.

The 27-year-old star from Columbus, Ohio saw his Cup Series playoff dreams finally extinguished in a single moment when he suffered damage after contact from the controversial Hocevar on Lap 32 of the second stage.

It was another day of controversy for the 22-year-old Hocevar, who has been nicknamed ‘Hurricane’ for his impact on the sport this year. Earlier he had been at the center of the incident which saw Kyle Busch hit the wall on the very first lap.

Cindric fell 22 laps down at the Bank of America Roval 400 after having to hit pit road for repairs, and that saw any hopes of progressing to the Round of 8 disappear completely. He would eventually finish 36th on the day.

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Cindric on Hocevar and playoff KO

Afterwards Austin told media: “Just a shame that we got hit so perfectly, that KO’d all of my rear suspension.

“You don’t want three races to define your season. It’s amazing how much everything ebbs and flows throughout the year. You feel like for a month, you can’t do anything wrong, and for three weeks that matter the most, you feel like you can’t do anything right. It’s just how the cookie crumbles and you gotta be on it, and we’ll learn.”

The tangle with Hocevar was not the first issue Cindric experienced on Sunday - he had earlier dealt with a pair of issues in the backstretch chicane. But despite those, he had still felt in the playoff hunt until that costly scrape with ‘Hurricane’.

“It’s such a long race here, like, in those moments, I didn’t feel like I was out of it.

“I just wanted to not put us in a situation where we’re completely out of it, just knowing the strategies were going to get super crazy with the super long run, having the [tire] falloff we had [Saturday], knowing how big the windows were.”

Tough Round of 12 for Team Penske star

Cindric endured a difficult Round of 12, with the Team Penske star never finishing better than 17th in any of the three races. He was ready to shoulder most of the blame for that.

“I mean, this round was definitely tough for us. I mean, never really feel like we even had the speed to get stage points in any of the races.”

“But I also feel like I take a lot of that with having a qualifying lap each week that probably would have put me in the top 10 and slipping up and not being able to execute.

“I feel like I displayed some of my car control more than I displayed speed this round, so I feel like that falls on me.”

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