A week ago, Kaden Honeycutt was standing at Texas Motor Speedway calling himself out in public. A stack of starts, plenty of close finishes, no wins. The kind of self-criticism a driver only does when he's tired of waiting.
Friday afternoon at Watkins Glen International, the waiting ended.
Honeycutt grabbed the lead from Connor Zilisch through Turn 1 on the first lap of overtime, pulled away, and won the Bully Hill Vineyards 176 by 0.902 second. First career NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series win. The No. 11 TRICON Garage Toyota was the same truck Corey Heim drove to Victory Lane at The Glen last year. Different driver, same building. A young tradition.
Look. I'm a sucker for breakthrough wins. But this one is something else, and let me tell you why.
Honeycutt didn't beat journeymen. He beat the two drivers who have OWNED NASCAR road courses for the past two years. Zilisch finished second by less than a second. Shane van Gisbergen finished third — yes, the same SVG who won five of the six Cup road-course races in 2025. Honeycutt put them P2 and P3 on his way to Victory Lane.
That's not nothing.
(And he had to climb to do it. Honeycutt drew a penalty near the end of stage two for pitting when pit road was closed. Restarted the final 32-lap stage from the back. So when he made the OT pass on Zilisch, he was the guy who'd been at the rear earlier in the same final stage.)
The race had to find its way to overtime first, and it did, courtesy of the Ross Chastain we've all come to know. With eight laps left, Chastain held the lead over Zilisch for a restart. Then he powered his Niece Motorsports Chevrolet before he reached the restart zone. Penalty. Sent to the back. Six laps later, Chastain caught a Turn 5 wreck on Lap 70 and finished P28. The yellow from that incident is what forced the overtime that gave Honeycutt his shot.
Chastain on the radio after the penalty call: "What?! You can't get a penalty when you're the control car." You can. The video showed his truck launching early. NASCAR was right.
Zilisch had the inside line on the OT restart and chose the outside lane. He'd later wish he hadn't.
"On the restart, I think Zilisch missed a shift a little bit coming off of (Turn) 7, and I was tight to him," Honeycutt said. "The only option I had — we were three-wide going into (Turn) 1, and I barely got to his right rear and touched him a little bit. It was just enough to scoot by him. As soon as I got the lead, I pulled my visor up, and I was full-blown focused after that."
Zilisch knew exactly what had gone wrong. "I chose the top, hoping we could get through there without making contact. I knew that the bottom would be better if that happened, but I didn't want to be that guy." He's run nine Truck races. He still doesn't have a win. And he's racing two more times this weekend — the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race Saturday, the Cup race Sunday — so the kid's not crying about it.
Honeycutt also won the ARCA Menards Series race at Watkins Glen earlier the same Friday. Different series. Different car. Same trophy ceremony. He's now one of two drivers in racing history to win an ARCA race and a Truck Series race on the same day. The other guy was Sam Mayer at Bristol in 2020. That's the entire list.
After the Truck win, Honeycutt did what young drivers in 2026 are apparently supposed to do — he shotgunned a beer beneath the flag stand, the liquid pouring across his face. Folks, that is winning a race.
(Carson Hocevar, last week's Truck winner at Texas, ran top-10 most of the afternoon before checking up on a Lap 62 restart and putting his nose into the inside frontstretch wall after AJ Allmendinger's bumper found him. Hocevar's after-race assessment: "I just enjoyed getting my butt kicked by the teenagers." Hocevar is 23. The teenagers are getting to him.)
Honeycutt now LEADS the Truck Series championship. By 29 points over Chandler Smith.
A week ago he couldn't win. Friday he couldn't lose. He sits on top of the standings with the playoffs still months away. And the other Ram drivers — Allmendinger, Mini Tyrrell, and Brenden Queen — put three trucks in the top ten for the first time in the brand's NASCAR return this year. The Bully Hill Vineyards 176 changed three things at once: a driver's career, a manufacturer's argument, and a championship picture.
Sunday afternoon, the Cup race goes green at the same track, with SVG on the pole and Zilisch starting fifth. Both of the road-course aces Honeycutt beat are driving for Trackhouse on Sunday. They'll have something to prove.
Friday belonged to Honeycutt. The Truck Series standings now do too.