After another weekend where Carson Hocevar ruffled some feathers on the racetrack, Dale Earnhardt Jr. senses that driver frustration with the 22-year-old is “building to something.” To this point in the season, Hocevar has upset drivers such as Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Brad Keselowski and Zane Smith.

Then in Sunday’s race at Watkins Glen International, he got sent spinning by Spire Motorsports teammate Michael McDowell. Hocevar responded by dooring him after crossing the start-finish line on the final lap. Notably, Hocevar hasn’t yet been involved in a major incident with a driver from Hendrick Motorsports. If that happens, you could see Hocevar’s decision making behind the wheel change, Earnhardt said on the “Dale Jr. Download.”

“We said this months and months ago — everything’s fine until he runs into one of Rick’s cars or something like that and he has to go into the office and talk to Rick Hendrick. It might not be Rick, but it’ll be a person like Rick that when he has to go in and have that conversation, that will have an effect. That might not fix it all, but that will have an effect on the decision making behind the wheel,” Earnhardt said. “I’m entertained by Hocevar until it becomes my problem. I think it’s all fine until he does something that irks Hendrick. Or somebody that’s directly above his chain of command. In the Cup race, him and McDowell racing each other to the finish — that might get some conversations going. You don’t know if they’re gonna pin that on McDowell and let Carson off the hook.

“… If he goes out there and impedes a lap for [Kyle] Larson and the big man gets upset, because the big man has some influence over Spire and has influence over most things Chevrolet. When you start messing with what his program is doing or what he’s trying to accomplish, that’s when the vice gets a little tight and Carson will feel that. Until that happens, until his crew chief or owners outright go ‘Carson, stop it,’ he’s not gonna make the adjustments because he doesn’t have to or need to — doesn’t feel like he needs to, not gonna change or alter his style. … It’s building to something and it’s gonna be worth watching. I’m entertained wondering how this is gonna play out.”

Carson Hocevar is still causing problems

Hendrick has done this before. Before Hocevar, it was Ross Chastain. And in 2023, Chastain often caused chaos on the racetrack. After Chastain wrecked Larson three times in a four-race span due to Chastain’s actions, Hendrick called him out publicly.

“He doesn’t have to be that aggressive,” Hendrick said of Chastain. “I guess at this point in the race maybe you’re super aggressive. But you just don’t run people up in the fence. He’s going to make a lot of enemies. It’s hard to win a championship when you’ve got a lot of paybacks out there.”

From time to time, Chastain still causes problems, but it’s less frequent than what we saw in 2022 and 2023. Many point to Hendrick’s public criticism as the turning point. Perhaps it could be the same for Hocevar, though he already seems to be looking to make amends with some.

Late in the race at Watkins Glen, Hocevar pulled to the side on the exit of Turn 5 and allowed Smith to go by him for 17th. Hocevar approached Smith’s car on pit road after the race. He leaned into his car and said, “Hey, I know that doesn’t make up for it, but you can expect that in the next couple weeks, OK?”

Hocevar is trying to pay back favors on the racetrack. We’ll see if this works for him throughout the rest of the season.

NASCAR will not make any changes with driver celebrations after Connor Zilisch’s fall last weekend in victory lane at Watkins Glen.

Zilisch, the Xfinity Series points leader, suffered a broken collarbone when he fell from his car in victory lane. He was standing on the door when he slipped.

“I remember, I got up on the car and I put my leg on the window net on the door and as soon as they started spraying water, it just kind of started to slide and I lost my footing,” Zilisch told NBC Sports last weekend at Watkins Glen. “I remember my legs split the door, I had one outside the door, one in the door and that’s when I started to tumble.”

Zilisch had surgery Tuesday to insert a plate and screws. No timetable has been announced for his return. The Xfinity Series is off until Aug. 22 at Daytona International Speedway.

Connor Zilisch was injured in a fall from his car in victory lane after winning last weekend’s Xfinity race at Watkins Glen.

Shane van Gisbergen, a teammate to Zilisch, stood on the roof of his car on the track after winning last weekend’s Cup race at Watkins Glen but did not do so in victory lane.

“I always have bad dreams of slipping over and doing at that in front of everyone,” van Gisbergen said. “But I just got out like I normally did, but I definitely didn’t get on the roof in victory lane.”

Denny Hamlin, on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast this week admitted that his victory lane celebrations could be impacted by Zilisch’s fall.

“I’m going to think about it from now on,” Hamlin said. “Maybe I should just, when I pop out, just sit my butt right on the top, just sit there.”

“It’s going to have to be a group decision,” Justin Marks said of when Connor Zilisch will be back in a car.

After winning at Las Vegas in March, Josh Berry stopped his car at the start/finish line and climbed on to the roof of his car. When he went to victory lane, Berry stood on the door of his car.

But that could change. Berry said he thinks every driver will look at how they celebrate a win after Zilisch’s fall.

“That was just so frightening to see,” Berry said Wednesday. “You take for granted how things can go. I think we’ll think about it more when you see something like that. I think you’re going to think about whether the … window net ends up on the door.

It’s the only NASCAR race weekend of the season for the 0.75-mile oval.

“Sometimes, it’s hard to, I mean we’ve been strapped in a car for three hours, four hours, you get out, it’s no different than being on a plane or something and standing up for the first time. You’re legs are a little shaky. Sometimes, I think, we take for granted some of that stuff. I think we’ll all look at it a little differently. Obviously, you don’t want to ruin the celebration element of it, but you’ve got to watch something like that and learn from it.

“That was a scary deal. I’m glad that he’s relatively OK. Obviously, he’s banged up a little bit, but I’m glad it was not worse than it was and hope to never see that again because it was hard to watch.”

Denny Hamlin seeks to score his sixth Cup win at Richmond this weekend, but teammate Chase Briscoe will among the challengers.

After winning Talladega earlier this season, Austin Cindric climbed to the roof of his car on the track and slammed the roof three times.

“I think about what happened to Connor often,” said the 6-foot-3 Cindric, who is among the taller Cup drivers. “The saying goes, big tree, fall hard.’ That’s a long way for a big tall guy to fall from.”

But Cindric said his victory celebrations are not likely to change much.

“It’s probably not going to stop me from being overly excited when I get out of the race car,” Cindric said Wednesday. “If you’re going up on top, I guess the morale of the story is you might as well stand on the roof.”

Natalie Decker will join the short list of female drivers to compete in NASCAR after becoming a mother, giving birth to her first child on February 5th of this year.

She will drive the No. 92 DGM Racing Chevrolet with sponsorship from Wawa. Josh Bilicki will drive the No. 91 as her teammate for the superspeedway race next weekend. The track is the site of Decker’s best showing in the Xfinity and Truck Series, as well as ARCA.

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Decker has 12 previous starts in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, most recently competing at Charlotte Motor Speedway in May, 2024 (also with DGM). Her best result came in the 2024 season-opener at Daytona, finishing 18th and leading seven laps.

Natalie Decker

Decker’s career also includes 32 starts in the Truck Series, finishing as high as fifth in the 2020 season-opener at Daytona. That result was the best ever for a woman competing in the NASCAR Truck Series.

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In 31 starts in ARCA, Decker has two top fives and nine top tens, including a pole position at Daytona in 2018. That year, she placed seventh in the standings.

Read Also:

Two to go: Breaking down the battle to make the NASCAR Cup playoffs

Shane van Gisbergen: “I’ve changed my life to come and do this”

Connor Zilisch undergoes surgery on collarbone after Victory Lane fall

To read more Motorsport.com articles visit our website.

Oregon Ducks WR Jurrion Dickey ‘indefinitely suspended’ from team

Published 6:03 pm Tuesday, August 12, 2025

The University of Oregon has indefinitely suspended former five-star wide receiver Jurrion Dickey from it’s football program, Ducks head coach Dan Lanning announced Tuesday.

“I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it. (Dickey) is indefinitely suspended with us,” Lanning told media members in a Tuesday press conference. “We have two team rules, that’s be respectful (and) be on time. There are some pieces of that where I felt like he needed a break from us and we needed a break from that so we can focus on what’s in front of us right now.

“(I’m) wishing him nothing but the best as far as success and want to see him get back to where he can be a contributor for somewhere. You know, that might be here, that might be somewhere else. But, (I) won’t spend any more time on that.”

Rumors and reports regarding Dickey’s status with the team swirled on social media Monday, culminating in a story from The Daily Emerald, the university’s student-run newspaper. According to the story, sources “close to the team” told the Emerald that Dickey allegedly got into a physical altercation with a member of the program and “has a history of bad relationships with teammates and staff throughout the football program.”

Lanning did not divulge specifics regarding the situation and did not address the alleged fight. The fourth-year head coach declined to answer when asked what it would take for Dickey to rejoin the team.

Dickey, a redshirt sophomore, has appeared in 15 games during his two seasons with the Ducks, recording two catches for 14 yards. Recruiting outlet 247Sports ranked the native of East Palo Alto, California, as a five-star in the class 2022.

Oregon opens the 2025 season Saturday, Aug. 30, against Montana State at Autzen Stadium.

There were two high-profile wrecks in the NASCAR Xfinity Series at Watkins Glen. One involved Connor Zilisch and the other Austin Hill.

For different reasons, both wrecks drew plenty of scrutiny. But at least one NASCAR insider, Jeff Gluck of The Athletic, thinks Zilisch got off a little light for his wreck of Shane van Gisbergen with about 15 laps to go.

“Zilisch, prior to (his fall), the story even though he won his sixth race of the year, a lot of the story afterwards was going to be people asking him about the contact he had with SVG,” Gluck said. “Because he wrecked SVG.”

Connor Zilisch went wide coming out of Turn 6, making his approach to Turn 7 a little difficult. Van Gisbergen gave him absolutely no room to work with.

That prompted Gluck to wonder about the ethics of letting a driver back on the track. Was van Gisbergen at least partially at fault?

“I mean, you could say, TV, Jamie McMurray made a really strong argument in terms of like, ‘Hey, SVG’s got to give a lane to let Zilisch back on the track after he had gone wide in that corner there,’” Gluck said. “Is that a thing? Who says you have to let a driver back in? Now I guess the alternative is if you don’t let him back on the track, you may yourself get wrecked. But ethically do you have to leave a lane for a driver to re-enter? Why can’t that driver just slide in behind you?”

The Connor Zilisch takeout of van Gisbergen benefited from Zilisch’s mostly sterling reputation on the track. Austin Hill‘s wipeout of Michael McDowell — and nearly half the field — did not.

“I think Zilisch being Zilisch actually got kind of the benefit of the doubt there,” Gluck said. “Where like Austin Hill in his incident certainly did not get the benefit of the doubt. I do not think Austin Hill intentionally wrecked Michael McDowell. What I do think is Austin Hill made a bad judgment there. But that wasn’t the same as, ‘I’m going to intentionally right-rear somebody,’ which by the way (Zilisch) denied this week to Dustin Albino of Jayski.”

Racing against Michael McDowell for P2, Austin Hill got to the inside of his left quarter panel. The two cars made contact, and McDowell quickly slammed into the wall. Soon after, dirt was in the air, and multiple cars came piling into the area.

In total, 16 cars were involved in this wreck. Several days were ruined.

Gluck was surprised that Hill, like Connor Zilisch, was as aggressive as he was. Unlike Zilisch, Hill entered with a reputation on the decline, following his recent suspension for an intentional clear-out of Aric Almirola.

“I think the Austin Hill thing, now if I was Austin Hill coming back after all that, you would have thought for one race you mind your Ps and Qs,” Gluck said. “You make sure that you don’t run anybody over, you don’t knock Zilisch over on a restart. You do not cause a 45-minute red flag by destroying McDowell and, by the way, Ryan Ellis.”

The destruction for Ellis was pretty complete. And it co uld have been much worse. Connor Zilisch’s wreck of van Gisbergen aside, as well as his post-race fall, Hill’s contact with McDowell to trigger a huge wreck was probably the story of the day.

Ellis took it worse than most. Gluck explained.

“The car pretty much went through his windshield,” he said. “And he said that’s a radio dead zone, they don’t have spotters in that area anyway. And he tweeted he saw dust and then he saw a car flying in that came in through his windshield. I mean he got lucky. That was a really, really, really bad wreck.

“So you would have thought if you were Austin Hill, regardless of, ‘Hey, I’m still gonna race hard.’ Which he said, ‘I’m not gonna change anything.’ He didn’t. I probably would have for one week. I’m just saying if it was me. But that’s why I’m not a racecar driver, I guess.”