Kyle Petty has insisted that controversial Spire Motorsports star Carson Hocevar will be a superstar in NASCAR, comparing him to some of the sport's greats.
Petty, son of NASCAR legend Richard Petty and a prolific racer with more than 800 Cup Series starts, compared Hocevar's attitude to that of Dale Earnhardt and made some bold predictions about the 23-year-old's future.
Hocevar has been a divisive figure in NASCAR thanks to his aggressive driving style, which has infuriated a number of drivers on the wrong end of one of his over-ambitious dives.
The duality of the Spire driver was on full display once again this weekend at Atlanta, where he fought back well from going two laps down due to a puncture and made some brilliant, daring moves to fight for the race win in the closing laps.
An unrelated incident sent the race to overtime, at which point Hocevar's racing instincts got the better of him and sent him pushing into a gap far too small to fit a racecar, wrecking Christopher Bell and sending the race to double OT.
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Petty: Hocevar owes no apologies
Petty wasn't put off by that move though, telling Inside The Race that night: “Carson Hocevar is going to be a superstar here [in NASCAR],” Petty opened up his rant. “And it’s not up to us, it’s not up to the media, it’s not up to other drivers – it is up to other drivers, to pull him back.
"But when I look at Carson Hocevar, I’ve been around this stuff a long freaking time, and I wrote this down while I was watching him. He’s got the attitude of Earnhardt, dude, the attitude of Earnhardt. I don’t care, I don’t care you run me in the grass, you do this, I don’t care. I’m going on, I’m gonna make my own way.
“He’s got the brashness of Tim Richmond. He’s got a swagger about him. He just gets out and gets it done. On the radio, he said ‘Shake and Bake’ all this stuff. When the booth asked him about it, he says, I don’t even know what I’m saying, dude, I’m just saying it, it’s all a TV show. I’m just throwing it out there. He’s just playing a game a little bit.
“Then we get down to it, he’s got the desire to win and the passion of Kyle Busch. He don’t wanna run second, he didn’t show up to make friends, he didn’t show up to do anything but win a race. My hot take is, he’s going to get white hot, and when he gets white hot, everybody better stand back.
"I don’t care if he’s at Spire, I don’t care where he’s at, what he’s doing, he is going to be a superstar in this sport, and he doesn’t owe anybody an apology, nobody an apology. And when he’s there, count on it lady, I’m going to have my Hocevar fan club card, I’m going to be wearing my Hocevar hat and my Hocevar shirt and saying, I was there from the beginning.”
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