Kaden Honeycutt had one driver left to hold off for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship on Friday night at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Fifteen laps in, that driver, Layne Riggs, blew a right-rear tire, and Honeycutt went on to win the race and his first title.
Honeycutt, who began the night 20 points ahead, passed Christian Eckes, in the No. 91 Chevrolet for McAnally-Hilgemann Racing, after the last restart and led the final 13 laps. He won by 1.038 seconds. Riggs never got back on the lead lap.
Riggs, in the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford, won seven races this season, the most in the series, to Honeycutt's five. "Congratulations to the No. 11," Riggs said afterward. "They had a consistent season."
Honeycutt, 23, finished the season 83 points ahead of Riggs. It is the second straight title for Honeycutt's No. 11 TRICON Garage Toyota, which Corey Heim drove to the championship last year.
Two right-rear tires and a penalty
Riggs had said before the race that he was "going for broke." On the second lap he dove under the pole-sitter, Nick Sanchez, for third, got loose and touched Sanchez's truck coming off Turn 2. He had faded to eighth by lap 15, when the tire blew.
He pitted and came back out two laps down. The first stage, one of two segments that pay bonus points before the finish, ended under caution. Riggs took the wave-around, which gives a lapped truck a lap back. On lap 44 he was back on pit road with another right-rear problem and sat in his pit box for nearly two and a half minutes. His team was also penalized for having too many people over the wall, which cost him another trip through the pits. He finished 32nd, six laps down.
"We knew we were going to have to run an almost perfect race," Riggs said, adding that he would not "put a bad look on the entire year" over one race.
The pit call and the last restart
Heim, in TRICON's No. 1 Toyota, won both stages. Honeycutt said afterward, "Tonight we weren't the best truck to start."
Sanchez's truck slowed and caught fire on the frontstretch on lap 105, and the caution that followed set up the finish. Honeycutt said he and his crew chief, Scott Zipadelli, talked on the radio about whether to pit. Staying out, he said, would have put them "in a terrible position to get wrecked." He came in with the other leaders for fresh tires. A crash behind the leaders on the next restart brought one more caution.
When racing resumed with 14 laps left, Eckes got the better start and led into Turn 1. Honeycutt said his goal on that restart was to finish, so he gave Eckes room. "I know Christian hadn't won a race this year, so I knew he was going to be aggressive, as he should be," he said. "I was leaving quite a bit of space."
Honeycutt cleared Eckes for the lead in Turn 3 on the next lap. Three laps after the pass, Eckes brushed the wall, and Honeycutt's lead grew past a second. Honeycutt credited Zipadelli's last adjustment, which let him "drive off into the sunset and just ride the rest of the run."
"I lost it when I took the white flag," Honeycutt said. Zipadelli, asked what he thought when he heard his driver crying, said, "He was crying like a little baby."
"Yeah, I was," Honeycutt said.
Eckes finished second for the fourth time in the seven races of the Chase, the series' playoff. Daniel Hemric was third, Ty Majeski fourth and Stewart Friesen fifth. Heim was running third when he hit the wall on lap 127, and he finished sixth. Chandler Smith, Riggs's teammate at Front Row, was seventh and finished third in the standings. Brenden Queen finished 20th and won the series' Rookie of the Year award.
A rocky start in a 12-win truck
Honeycutt took over the No. 11 this year after a season with Heim that Zipadelli summed up as "12 wins and a lot of statistical records."
"I was not a champion driver to start the season," Honeycutt said in Victory Lane. "I was very out of my comfort zone."
At his news conference, Honeycutt said he used to take losses hard, with "bad interviews, bad looks outside of the racetrack."
"I don't think I win Phoenix, I don't think I win today if I would have been a hothead like I used to be," he said.
Kevin Ray, TRICON's general manager, said one reason for the slow start was that Zipadelli missed the first few races with a leg injury. "When you see your leg facing the wrong way, it's really not a good day," Zipadelli said. "Six, eight months later, I still can't walk," he said.
Honeycutt's first Truck Series win came at Watkins Glen in May. "I could see a big weight lifted off of Kaden's shoulders," Zipadelli said. Asked when he got over the hump, Honeycutt pointed to Richmond, his next win, after the team figured out a new left-side tire it had struggled with on short tracks. Ray said the team's goal for Honeycutt's first year with TRICON had been three or four wins. Honeycutt won five, three of them in the Chase.
It is Zipadelli's third Truck Series championship as a crew chief, each with a different driver: Brett Moffitt in 2018, Heim last year and now Honeycutt. NASCAR says two crew chiefs had won three before him. "I think that means I'm old," Zipadelli said.
"Scott Zipadelli is the best damn crew chief on that pit road," Honeycutt said.
He worked on the trucks before he drove them
Honeycutt, who is from Willow Park, Texas, grew up racing on dirt. "I moved to North Carolina to work on the trucks," he said. He raced part time for On Point Motorsports, G2G Racing and Niece Motorsports while working on the trucks he drove, which he said was his only way into a seat. Last year was his first full season.
He remembered an agent telling his father that making it was "a one in a million shot" for someone with "no money, nowhere to go other than work on the truck and figure out how to drive."
"Well, I guess we're going to have to be that one 'cause we don't have a choice," Honeycutt said he told his father.