NASCAR Hits Zane Smith With a $50,000 Fine for His Phoenix Hit on Carson Hocevar, Says He Ignored a July Warning

NASCAR fined Zane Smith $50,000 on Tuesday for driving into the back of Carson Hocevar’s car after the checkered flag at Phoenix Raceway, and the official explaining the penalty pointed less to the hit itself than to a meeting the two drivers had with the sanctioning body in July.

NASCAR’s penalty report cites Section 10.5.2.5a of the Cup Series rule book, which says violations that compromise safety will be handled case by case “with the highest level of seriousness,” along with Section 4.4a, the rule book’s ladder of behavioral penalty levels. The report lists the fine and nothing else: no points deduction and no probation. Smith, who drives the No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford, has a few days to appeal.

Mike Forde, NASCAR’s vice president of racing communications, gave the reasoning on the series’ Hauler Talk podcast. Officials called both drivers into the NASCAR hauler at EchoPark Speedway in July with a simple message, he said: “If you guys can’t figure it out, we will help you figure it out.” By Forde’s account, “they couldn’t figure it out,” and Phoenix was a response to “the ask that we had that we felt was largely ignored.”

Lap 296 and the cool-down lap

The penalty report lays out the sequence. On Lap 296 of 312, Ross Chastain hit Hocevar entering Turn 3, which sent Hocevar’s No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet into Smith and into Josh Berry’s No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford. Tyler Reddick, who took the lead on the Lap 294 restart, won the race. Chastain finished ninth, Hocevar 12th and Smith 15th.

After the flag, Smith rammed Hocevar’s rear bumper and followed him to pit road. In-car video posted by reporter Noah Lewis catches Smith being told on the radio that the No. 77 team says it was shoved into the No. 38 a few laps from the finish. Smith’s reply: “I don’t give a f*ck.” Lewis followed with a replay of what he called the moment Hocevar “was pushed into Smith and others by Chastain.” NASCAR’s own account posted video with a caption blaming “a chain reaction in the closing laps.”

The report describes Chastain’s contact and records no action against him.

Hamlin had the best seat

Denny Hamlin was running right behind the Turn 3 contact, a lap down in the free-pass spot after a cut tire and a pit road speeding penalty. A caution would have handed him his lap back, and on his Actions Detrimental podcast he admitted he was rooting for Hocevar to wreck somebody: “Just do Carson things here.”

He also questioned how hard Hocevar tried to save it. When Chastain sent him into the corner, Hamlin said, “Carson didn’t hit the brakes.” He allowed that braking or turning left with a car already on edge in Turn 3 could have spun the No. 77 anyway. On Smith’s hit after the race, he said, “That’s probably a little aggressive.” The hosts noted that neither car appeared damaged by it. Hamlin knows the going rate: in 2023 NASCAR fined him $50,000 and docked him 25 points after he said on this same podcast that he had deliberately pushed Chastain toward the wall at Phoenix.

What $50,000 has bought before

The number is a familiar one. Hocevar paid the same amount after Kansas last fall for spinning his tires to rejoin the race with safety workers around his car. Bubba Wallace paid it in 2024 for hitting Alex Bowman’s car on a cool-down lap in Chicago, the precedent NASCAR.com’s own Hauler Talk writeup cites.

The contact NASCAR left alone is the more instructive list. At Chicagoland on July 5, Smith got into Hocevar on Lap 32 and put both cars into the outside wall, costing each a lap. No penalty followed. After Charlotte on Oct. 11, NASCAR discussed the incident at length and declined to penalize Michael McDowell and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. for their post-race run-in, which it saw as heat of the moment and quickly defused. Smith’s case, Forde said, “was a little bit different than that, largely because of the conversation we had.”

So the wreck that put two cars in the fence in July was free, and a bump that left no visible mark in October cost $50,000, with the difference explained by a meeting in between.

The meeting that didn’t take

Smith told reporters after that July session at EchoPark that “I think we both understand where we’re at with everything.” Asked whether he could race Hocevar without trouble, he said, “No.” Hocevar said he had “never been called to the hauler after getting wrecked.” The two have been trading contact since Iowa in August 2025, when Hocevar put Smith into the wall.

NASCAR’s report carries no statement from either driver or either team, and it doesn’t say what happens if the two meet again. Forde declined to go further while Smith’s appeal window is open.

Hocevar goes to Talladega 11th in the standings, 158 points behind leader Kyle Larson, with three races left in his first Chase. He won there in April. Smith is 26th. The YellaWood 500 is Sunday.

Was $50,000 the right price for Smith’s Phoenix hit, or should NASCAR have charged him for Chicagoland in July instead?

Sources: NASCAR penalty report, Oct. 20, 2026; NASCAR Hauler Talk podcast via NASCAR.com; NASCAR.com race recap, Oct. 18, 2026; NASCAR.com, July 11, 2026; Noah Lewis and NASCAR posts on X, Oct. 18, 2026; Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin, Oct. 20, 2026.

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Shawn Henry

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Shawn Henry has spent years writing about cars, and it shows—not in a resume kind of way, but in how he talks about them. He's the type who'll notice the weird trim option nobody remembers and actually know why it mattered. At Backfire News, he covers pretty much the whole spectrum: off-road trucks and trail builds, performance cars, racing, and the collector market. He's comfortable getting into the technical weeds, but he never forgets that most people read about cars because cars are fun, not because they want a spec sheet. His beat runs from classic and collector vehicles to overlanding culture, modified performance builds, new automotive tech, and the industry news that actually affects what ends up in your driveway. Mostly, though, Shawn thinks the best car stories are about people—the builds they pour money into, the road trips, the communities that form around a shared obsession. That's the stuff he likes writing about, and it's what you'll find in his work here.

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