Top-10 finishes by Kaden Honeycutt and Layne Riggs in the Love’s RV Stop 225 at Talladega Superspeedway allowed Honeycutt to gain only four points on Riggs in the fight for this year’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship.
Honeycutt leads Riggs by 43 points with two races remaining.
“We set a goal that if I was 45 (points) or worse back, we’re not gonna have a shot,” Riggs said about the championship. “Obviously, I think the 11 (Honeycutt) can’t be as good as us. We’re gonna have to go dominate the next two races. I know this team can do it. We’ve done it all year long.”
Riggs has won seven races this year while Honeycutt has won four. Riggs also possesses 12 Stage victories to Honeycutt’s seven.
In Friday’s race, both were poised to claim a victory, but when the checkered flag waved in overtime, Honeycutt was fifth and Riggs sat eighth to winner Sammy Smith. The victory was Smith’s first-ever in the Truck Series, but his second at the 2.66-mile Talladega track. He won a NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Talladega in 2024 driving for JR Motorsports.
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Sammy Smith.
“I felt like we did a good job putting ourselves there in a good spot,” said Smith, who was the top lap leader with 21 laps in the 86-lap race.
Second to Smith in laps led was Austin Green, who made his Truck Series debut with a third-place finish. With the 14 laps Green led added to Smith’s total, it meant Spire Motorsports was in the No. 1 position for 35 of the 86 laps.
However, with the season winding down, the Chase for the championship has basically come down to two drivers—Honeycutt and Riggs.
On lap 79 of the scheduled 80-lap race, Honeycutt was pushing ARCA champion Thomas Annunziata, who was leading the outside lane, while Riggs was second to Smith on the inside. When the field charged off towards the first turn, Honeycutt’s push of Annunziata went terribly wrong. Annunziata slammed into the outside wall and caught Grant Enfinger as he bounced off of it. That sent the race into overtime.
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Sammy Smith (#7), Layne Riggs (#34), Ty Majeski (#88), and Kaden Honeycutt.
When the field lined up for the restart, Smith and Riggs were on the front row with Smith on the inside and Riggs on the outside with Honeycutt behind him. On the backstretch of the final lap, Ty Majeski shuffled Honeycutt to the outside, leaving him without drafting help. In the race to the finish line, Tyler Ankrum gave Smith the shove he needed for the victory. Smith finished 0.091-second ahead of Ankrum. The separation between Smith and the eighth-place Riggs was 0.278 second.
“I still have to decipher exactly what happened and what we could have done better there,” Riggs said. “I’m just kind of disappointed about how it finished there. I felt like me and the 88 (Ty Majeski) were gonna get side-by-side for the win. We worked well together all day, and it looked like he pushed me out and shoved me to the third lane. It seems like he’s not really sure, either. He was just running his race.”
Majeski, who like Riggs drives a Ford, moved into third in the standings with his fourth-place finish, 141 points behind Honeycutt with Martinsville and Homestead left on the schedule.
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Kaden Honeycutt.
Despite increasing his lead in the standings, Honeycutt wasn’t happy after the race that had five caution flags for 26 laps and a 10:03 red flag for a nine-truck crash near the end of Stage 1.
“I’m just so disappointed in myself to not make the right moves at the end of the race to get the win,” Honeycutt said. “I should have locked on to Ty (Majeski) longer than trying to make the move too quick. I did the same thing at Daytona, and just didn’t execute where I needed to, to finish the race off.
“Got a good cushion (in the standings), but you never say it is over till it is over.”
A North Carolina native, Deb Williams is an award-winning motorsports journalist who is in her fourth decade covering auto racing. In addition to covering the sport for United Press International, she has written motorsports articles for several newspapers, magazines and websites including espnW.com, USA Today, and The Charlotte Observer. Her awards include the American Motorsports Media Award of Excellence, two-time National Motorsports Press Association writer of the year, and two-time recipient of the Russ Catlin award. She also has won an award in the North Carolina Press Association’s sports feature category. During her career, Deb has been managing editor of GT Motorsports magazine and was with Winston Cup Scene and NASCAR Winston Cup Scene for 18 years, serving as the publication’s editor for 10 years. In 2024 she was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame.