{"id":952916,"date":"2026-10-31T08:20:58","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T08:20:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/952916\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T08:20:58","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T08:20:58","slug":"two-drivers-and-20-points-will-determine-nascar-trucks-title-at-homestead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/952916\/","title":{"rendered":"Two drivers and 20 points will determine NASCAR Trucks title at Homestead"},"content":{"rendered":"

The difference between Kaden Honeycutt<\/a> and Kaden Honeycutt is 20 points with just Homestead-Miami Speedway remaining but both feel like next Friday is basically winner-take-all.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a 20-point difference from first to second place on any given weekend so that\u2019s why Riggs was seemingly thrilled with a third-place on Friday at Martinsville Speedway because he effectively closed the gap to within the tipping point.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll positivity,\u201d Riggs said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to go win it.\u00a0With this format having 20 bonus points, it\u2019s pretty much a winner-take-all again, in my opinion.\u00a0Instead of having four, it\u2019s two this time, so we\u2019re going to go win.\u00a0That\u2019s all I can go do.\u00a0Go win.\u00a0At least go match him in stage points.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t have a bad qualifying effort or have something bad on pit road.\u00a0We\u2019ve just got to go there and execute.\u00a0As you saw tonight, he\u2019s not as dominant as some people think.\u00a0He had a little issue that kind of helped us out as well, but it would have been nice to win for me.\u00a0We would have been in the plus right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Riggs was so ecstatic was kind of a surprise because he swept both stages and led the most laps but got beat by teammate Chandler Smith<\/a>. Riggs wasn\u2019t expecting a handout from his teammate and didn\u2019t get one either.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, he’s not supposed to lift for me,\u201d Riggs said. \u201cI’m proud of Chandler. He did exactly what he’s supposed to do as a teammate. I just wish I could have been better on the restarts. I know they had a little bit more air (pressure) because every restart, he was able to fire off faster then he would fade so I knew that he was going to be better on the restart.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I got a good launch. I just got really loose in one and two. I’ve been loose every restart. I knew it was going to happen. I tried to prep my tire as best I could, but I was kind of shooting myself in the foot and taking the bottom. But like I said, it was not worth the risk of taking the top and potentially getting wrecked.\u201d<\/p>\n

But still, Honeycutt faded to 14th on that final run, and a win would have completely flipped the standings altogether. Instead of 20 behind, he could have been three up, but in his mind, there is no difference between the two.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, it\u2019s 20 (points) to win and if everything goes well, I think everybody knows we’re going to finish 1-2,\u201d Riggs said. \u201cSo if I can just stay within 20 during the first two stages, winner-take-all, that’s what it’s going to be. I think it’s going to be a heck of a show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Honeycutt would have preferred less of a \u2018heck of a show\u2019 and could have put this championship away with a better performance. He struggled to keep his truck in the top-five during the first half, and lost 10 points of his 43-point lead during the stages. <\/p>\n

Then he lost the next 13 on the track.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like the only thing I lacked was rear grip tonight and then he put the truck in the racetrack and then I just couldn’t turn,\u201d Honeycutt said. \u201cSo I don’t know, it was really funky-weird. I went there the last run and then all of a sudden it started turning and it drove off good. And that’s when I got to the outside of Layne and I was on the outside of Tristan and it felt like it came to life again.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I don’t know if it was (tire) heat cycles or something messing with my truck. So I don’t know. I feel like mechanically we had some other things going on, shock related and things like that. So yeah, thankfully we got bailed out and helped out there at the end and we go to Homestead 20 points, but we’re going to try to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

His crew chief, Scott Zipadelli, told Motorsport.com there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the truck. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s Martinsville,\u201d he said. \u201cWe practice at day and race at night. And that’s what missing it by just that much looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

He agreed that the two red flags and resulting heat cycles did not help their truck.<\/p>\n

Honeycutt also lost seven spots when going three-wide with Ty Majeski<\/a> and Tristan McKee left him with the short stick.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was just trying to give Majeski room and I didn\u2019t get the call that we were three-wide until it was too late,\u201d Honeycutt said. \u201cIt\u2019s a sucky deal, but I got bailed out there especially with Chandler winning that race. I\u2019m really surprised he did that. Yeah, 20 points, but definitely not comfortable in Homestead next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was surprised that Smith took the lead from Riggs given that it was a 20-point swing but Smith was racing for himself, crew chief Jon Leonard and their No. 38 car.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a responsibility to Bob Jenkins and my 38 team to go out there and win the race, but at the same time evaluate the situation, don’t do something that’s going to hurt the 34 detrimentally,\u201d Smith said. \u201cAnd we both got a really good restart, and (Majeski) got to my bumper at a perfect time, getting into (Turn) 1 and kind of lunged me forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd yeah, the rest really was history after that. So he ended up third? So yeah, I think he still had a solid points day at least.\u201d <\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The difference between Kaden Honeycutt and Kaden Honeycutt is 20 points with just Homestead-Miami Speedway remaining but both…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,66047,26793,634,18242,82,325841],"class_list":["post-952916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-martinsville","tag-martinsville-speedway","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-truck","tag-sports","tag-two-drivers-and-20-points-will-determine-nascar-trucks-title-at-homestead"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}