Kaden Honeycutt won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Phoenix Raceway on Friday night and more than doubled his lead in the Chase, the series' championship playoff. He led Layne Riggs by 17 points after Charlotte. He leads by 39 now, with three races left.
The race turned on pit road. During the caution that ended the second stage, Honeycutt's TRICON Garage crew got his No. 11 Toyota out first among the trucks taking four tires. Stewart Friesen, who took two, came out ahead, and Honeycutt passed him on the restart. He led the last 53 laps and beat Christian Eckes by 1.556 seconds. Riggs started on the pole, led the first 43 laps and finished third.
The lead may not hold for long. The Chase goes next to Talladega Superspeedway on Friday, Oct. 23, and Honeycutt said the Chase "could flip up on its head pretty quickly" there. "You can go from running first to 35th really quickly," he said. Martinsville and Homestead-Miami finish the season.
A week ago at Charlotte, Honeycutt was leading with seven laps left when his truck slid into the outside wall and Riggs went by. On Friday, he said, his crew put him out front and he did "not look back in the mirror like I did last week."
It was the 23-year-old's fourth win, all this season, in his 81st Truck Series start, and his first at Phoenix. He is the only driver with two wins in the Chase, at Kansas and Phoenix.
The Truck race at Talladega comes first that weekend, before the O'Reilly and Cup races. "Unfortunately, I don't get to watch an O'Reilly or Cup race before that and kind of judge on how things work out," Honeycutt said. "So we'll be the guinea pigs for that." The race starts at 4 p.m. ET on FS1.
Eckes is third in the standings, 112 points back, after his third straight second-place finish, the first driver to do that since Johnny Sauter in 2017. Chandler Smith, Riggs's teammate at Front Row Motorsports, fell from third to fourth, 117 back. He was penalized during the stage-break stops for too many crew members over the wall and for pitting before pit road was open, restarted at the back and finished 15th.
Ty Majeski of ThorSport Racing won both stages, the segments that pay points before the finish, and led 49 laps but finished fourth. Jake Garcia was fifth, followed by William Sawalich, Daniel Hemric, Giovanni Ruggiero, Grant Enfinger and Brent Crews. Cole Butcher, 18th, was the top rookie.