Despite five finishes of 30th or worst in the first eight races of the season, Carson Hocevar has avoided getting caught up in the dismal results.
It’s the encouraging performance of his No. 77 Chevrolet that has the 22-year-old from Portage, Michigan, believing his team is emerging as a force in NASCAR’s premier Cup Series.
“Our group is so strong,” said Hocevar, who is in his second full Cup season. “We’re so good on pit road. We’re good on the racetrack. We just got to be able to take advantage of the adversity. As my dad would remind me when I was a kid racing, they are character-building moments.”
Despite the disappointments, Hocevar still is part of the best start in the six-year history of Spire Motorsports, one of the season’s major surprises.
At Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Michael McDowell (a two-time Cup winner hired for 2025 by Spire) delivered the first pole in team history. Hocevar finished a career-best second at Atlanta Motor Speedway
Spire, which has yet to finish a season in the top 20 of the championship standings, has its three cars ranked between 19th and 25th in points after overhauling its roster with a host of championship veterans.
Rodney Childers, who guided Kevin Harvick to the 2014 championship and earned 40 wins as a crew chief, joined the No. 7 of Justin Haley. Dax Gerringer, formerly a lead engineer for Childers at Stewart-Haas Racing, was hired as Spire’s technical director. Matt McCall, a four-time winner as a Cup crew chief, was added as director of vehicle performance.
“A lot of the impact on our program is the unsung heroes,” Hocevar said before finishing 11th and leading two laps (despite a pit stop miscue) in the April 13 race at Bristol Motor Speedway. “It’s Matt McCall, Dax and a handful of others in the competition space.”
Their mettle will be tested as Bristol marked the quarter-pole of a 36-race season that gets only more grueling.
Emerging from the Easter off-weekend, the Cup Series will return Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway for a stretch of racing on 28 consecutive weeks through the Nov. 2 season finale at Phoenix Raceway.
Denny Hamlin, who has been another 2025 surprise in ending a long winless drought with new crew chief Chris Gayle, said he understands the reason for the marathon but fears the stress.
“There is always a breaking point,” he said. “It is harder and harder to keep people over the years. It is just generally a hard sport to be a part of because of the schedule. It is certainly not ideal.”
Here are some other surprises, good and bad, from the season so far:
In three championships from 2022-24, Team Penske developed a title blueprint of playing possum in the regular season before reeling off hot playoff runs by Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney.
The lack of early results from Penske’s trio of drivers is befuddling this season.
Logano needed seven races before his first top 10 finish, the longest stretch for a defending Cup series champion. Blaney has led five races in his No. 12 Ford but averaged a finish of 16.7 because of mechanical failures, mediocre pit stops and crash misfortune. Austin Cindric could have won the first two races at Daytonaand Atlanta but twice got wrecked.
“Last year, we didn’t run very good and then we were able to fabricate a finish somehow,” Logano said. “This year has kind of been the opposite. You name it, and it has happened. The fact that we have speed gives me a lot of confidence that a win will be around the corner at some point.”
After his debut in the championship field, Tyler Reddick keeps gathering steam with top-three rankings in NASCAR’s passing, defense and speed categories. Teammate Bubba Wallace, who missed the playoffs last year, has shown major gains on restarts (ranking third in the series with his No. 23 Toyota).
In its fifth year, the team co-owned by Hamlin and NBA legend Michael Jordan is on target for qualifying two title contenders despite the distractions of facing off with NASCAR in federal court for an antitrust battle that could drag through the year.
The preseason optimism was high for Brad Keselowski. He ended a 110-race winless streak last year and was reunited for 2025 with crew chief Jeremy Bullins, who took Keselowski to his most recent championship round appearance in 2020.
But it’s been a wipeout for the No. 6 Ford driver, whose best finish is 11th. The 2012 Cup champion is ranked 31st in the standings and is off to the worst start of his 16-season career. At 41, the driver-owner of Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing could face career decisions if the trajectory continues.
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
Carson Hocevar (77) goes down the back stretch during a NASCAR Cup Series auto race, Sunday, April 13, 2025, in Bristol, Tenn. (AP Photo/Wade Payne)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.
Iran had no immediate reaction to the news, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.
Meanwhile Monday, Iran called for pro-government demonstrators to head to the streets in support of the theocracy, a show of force after days of protests directly challenging the rule of 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian state television aired chants from the crowd, who shouted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”
Trump and his national security team have been weighing a range of potential responses against Iran including cyberattacks and direct strikes by the U.S. or Israel, according to two people familiar with internal White House discussions who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
“The military is looking at it, and we’re looking at some very strong options,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday night. Asked about Iran’s threats of retaliation, he said: “If they do that, we will hit them at levels that they’ve never been hit before.”
Trump said that his administration was in talks to set up a meeting with Tehran, but cautioned that he may have to act first as reports of the death toll in Iran mount and the government continues to arrest protesters.
“I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States,” Trump said. “Iran wants to negotiate.”
He added: “The meeting is being set up, but we may have to act because of what’s happening before the meeting. But a meeting is being set up. Iran called, they want to negotiate.”
Iran through country's parliamentary speaker warned Sunday that the U.S. military and Israel would be “legitimate targets” if America uses force to protect demonstrators.
More than 10,600 people also have been detained over the two weeks of protests, said the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous unrest in recent years and gave the death toll. It relies on supporters in Iran crosschecking information. It said 496 of the dead were protesters and 48 were with security forces.
With the internet down in Iran and phone lines cut off, gauging the demonstrations from abroad has grown more difficult. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the toll. Iran’s government has not offered overall casualty figures.
Those abroad fear the information blackout is emboldening hard-liners within Iran’s security services to launch a bloody crackdown. Protesters flooded the streets in the country’s capital and its second-largest city on Saturday night into Sunday morning. Online videos purported to show more demonstrations Sunday night into Monday, with a Tehran official acknowledging them in state media.
In Tehran, a witness told the AP that the streets of the capital empty at the sunset call to prayers each night. By the Isha, or nighttime prayer, the streets are deserted.
Part of that stems from the fear of getting caught in the crackdown. Police sent the public a text message that warned: “Given the presence of terrorist groups and armed individuals in some gatherings last night and their plans to cause death, and the firm decision to not tolerate any appeasement and to deal decisively with the rioters, families are strongly advised to take care of their youth and teenagers.”
Another text, which claimed to come from the intelligence arm of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, also directly warned people not to take part in demonstrations.
“Dear parents, in view of the enemy’s plan to increase the level of naked violence and the decision to kill people, ... refrain from being on the streets and gathering in places involved in violence, and inform your children about the consequences of cooperating with terrorist mercenaries, which is an example of treason against the country,” the text warned.
The witness spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity due to the ongoing crackdown.
The demonstrations began Dec. 28 over the collapse of the Iranian rial currency, which trades at over 1.4 million to $1, as the country’s economy is squeezed by international sanctions in part levied over its nuclear program. The protests intensified and grew into calls directly challenging Iran’s theocracy.
Nikhinson reported from aboard Air Force One.
In this frame grab from video obtained by the AP outside Iran, a masked demonstrator holds a picture of Iran's Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Friday, January. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)
In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran shows protesters taking to the streets despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026.(UGC via AP)
In this frame grab from footage circulating on social media from Iran showed protesters once again taking to the streets of Tehran despite an intensifying crackdown as the Islamic Republic remains cut off from the rest of the world in Tehran, Iran, Saturday Jan. 10, 2026. (UGC via AP)
