Denny Hamlin claims Spire Motorsports’ Corey LaJoie “lost his mojo”

Denny Hamlin asserts Corey LaJoie has been consistently outperformed by his teammate.

Denny Hamlin claims Spire Motorsports’ Corey LaJoie “lost his mojo”

Corey LaJoie and Denny Hamlin (VIa IMAGO)

The 2023 NASCAR Cup season witnessed Corey LaJoie’s return to being one of the most promising drivers in the garage after years of below par runs. He finished 25th in the championship, by driving consistently racing inside the top-15 with a Spire Motorsports’ Chevy that wasn’t often a top-15 car. But this year he hasn’t been able to produce any solid runs.

Corey LaJoie’s best performance this season has come in the Superspeedway, that to a P4 at Daytona 500, which is also his only top-10 finish of the season. In the last 15 races he has finished inside the top-20 just four times and has finished outside the top-30 a disappointing six times. Hence JGR veteran Denny Hamlin feels the Spire driver might have lost his mojo.

YouTube video

Hamlin via his podcast pointed out that compared to last year, the 2024 has been disappointing for LaJoie. He highlighted that the team’s performance has been good on Superspeedways only and now his teammate Carson Hocevar is running in the top-15 like LaJoie used to do last season.

FS Video
Corey is not quite, you know, they’ve lost some mojo somewhere, somehow over this last year, I would say. It’s only been like, kind of the speedways, where they would show up. And then you know, for whatever reason this No. 77 has gone from running like, dead-last last year to you know, they put Carson in and now he’s running P15 most weeks.
Denny Hamlin said via Action Detrimental.

Denny Hamlin highlights how good Carson Hocevar has been in 2024

Carson Hocevar was given a direct promotion to the Cup Series by Spire following his impressive performance in the Truck Series.  The youngster proved the team made the right choice from race one. Hamlin pointed out that from day one the youngster has been head and shoulders above his veteran teammate on the track.

Carson Hocevar
Carson Hocevar (via The Daily Downforce)
Carson, you’ve just got to start giving props to, because he’s out running Corey every single week. I can’t think, you know, I’m just thinking in my head, I haven’t seen like, Corey ahead of him much at all this year. So, and Corey was saying for a very long time, ‘I’ve never had a teammate to like, even remotely challenge me,’ and I think, challenge accepted, if you’re Carson Hocevar.
Denny Hamlin said.

It would be interesting see how the LaJoie-Hocevar dynamic will playout at Spire. If the veteran wont be able to make a comeback in 2024, the team might decide to further invest in their young star as at the end of the day, he is their future.

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