Well, that was unexpected.
On Aug. 4, Niece Motorsports made the surprising decision to release Kaden Honeycutt from his full-time NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series ride in the No. 45, effective immediately.
Honeycutt currently sits sixth in points and, while winless, is in prime position to snag a playoff spot on points.
So why was he released?
According to a statement from Niece, Honeycutt informed the team that he had signed with another team and manufacturer (a story in its own right) for 2026. The team stated releasing Honeycutt “allows our team the opportunity to begin building for next year.”
One could argue it’s completely fair to cut Honeycutt loose to avoid giving him a lame duck rest-of-season. When both driver and team know a parting of ways is coming, it’s easy to throw in the towel and let performance slip. An early release can avoid that entirely.
However, Niece General Manager Cody Efaw, speaking to SiriusXM NASCAR Radio’s Dave Moody on Sirius XM Speedway after the news dropped on Monday, implied that, while the lame-duck mindset was part of the reason for dropping Honeycutt, the move was also made from a loyalty perspective.
“We had what we thought was hopefully gonna be a bright future with Kaden,” Efaw said. “It’s tough, but my job is to make sure all our partners are taken care of, and one of our large partners is Chevrolet.
“Chevrolet’s not gonna let him get in the tech center and get on the simulators. I’m not gonna let him come into our comp[etition] meetings. Phil Gould [crew chief] … has certain things that he wants to live up to, and there’s certain information he needs out of a driver that I don’t feel like we [could] continue moving forward [with] and do it at a championship level with the No. 45 truck.”
Chevrolet wasn’t the only one unhappy, either. Most of the No. 45 truck’s sponsors joined the team specifically to sponsor Honeycutt. They saw Honeycutt possessed the talent but not the funding to go Truck Series racing, so they jumped onboard a program that Efaw says he put together himself to get Honeycutt to the NASCAR Cup Series one day.
“They have values,” Efaw said. “They’re loyal, which I’m thankful for. Al Niece [team owner] is one of the most loyal people I’ve ever met. Our new partners at DQS and Precision Vehicle and Logistics, they’re loyal.
“They were the ones who were going to forge the path forward for him. They kinda said, ‘Hey, we want someone in our trucks who wants to be here and wants to look forward and wants to grow together and continue. Because a year and a half ago, when no one wanted Kaden Honeycutt, we were the ones who said, let’s go do this.’
“I just think there’s a sense of loyal morals and values. There’s a standard that I think Al holds us to, [our sponsors] hold us to, myself, Phil Gould. … I have people out here [at the shop] that work their tail off. They spend a lot of time away from their family, they travel. … They’re invested in our drivers and what we do. They take it as a gut punch of ‘We’re not good enough.'”
It sounds like, while it doesn’t seem personal, it also seems personal.
Efaw does have a point in that NASCAR is a business, and a cutthroat one at that. Sometimes you have to make decisions that are in the best interest of a certain party or parties.
But at the same time, you wanna talk about loyalty? Tell that to Christian Rose, who was supposed to run full-time for Niece in 2025 in the No. 44, but lost funding right before the season started. Rather than doing the same thing Efaw claims he did for Honeycutt and finding any funding he could to keep Rose in the seat, the team removed Rose from the seat and scaled him back to part-time.
However, it quickly became apparent that even part-time wasn’t going to happen, as the team focused on the efforts of the all-star truck, which was supposed to be the No. 41, and left Rose in the dust.
Rose nor the team have made any statements suggesting Rose is no longer with the team, but with an open seat available the rest of the season — and partners who “want to be there” — why not put Rose in the seat?
Oh, by the way, Bayley Currey will drive the No. 45 for the rest of the season, save for the next race at Watkins Glen International, where Connor Zilisch will drive the truck.
Currey is a known commodity with Niece, as he drove full-time with the team last season and part-time this season and in 2023. Rose is exactly the kind of driver Efaw described to Moody that Niece searches for: drivers who could have the talent but lack the funding to go racing. It would make more sense for Niece to give Rose an audition for the final eight races of 2025 rather than someone who is a proven commodity at Niece.
Then there’s the aspect of investment in drivers. One of those drivers is Matt Mills, who is in the midst of his second full-time season with Niece. Niece is clearly invested in him, if anything, through the end of this season.
But after what happened last season, why would you pair a driver you’re invested in with a pay driver who put that very driver in the hospital?
As a reminder, at Homestead-Miami Speedway last season, Mills was wrecked by Conner Jones as payback for some hard racing between the two. Mills was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation after his truck caught fire after hitting the wall.
Jones was subsequently suspended for the next race at Martinsville Speedway.
Then, Niece signed him to a part-time deal this year.
Loyalty is backing your drivers in situations like those. And while Niece backed MIlls throughout that whole situation, it completely undid itself by signing Jones this year.
These three situations aren’t as tied together as you think, but they sum up Niece’s 2025 season — one that consists of funding and follies. Funding in the case of Rose losing his ride and Jones gaining one, follies in the case of this sudden situation with Honeycutt.
It’s all a cataclysm of a bigger issue within the program — the team is good, but not good enough.
Honeycutt was the closest anyone on the team could come to a victory, as evidenced by his sixth-place standing in the points. This, with a team that, despite its successes, has only ever won with two drivers — Ross Chastain and Carson Hocevar. Chastain’s win at Darlington Raceway in 2024 is the last time the team went to victory lane.
It needs to find drivers who will win races, and Honeycutt was that guy. He was making a legitimate playoff push for the team in both the drivers’ and owners’ standings, which would earn the team a lot more money at season’s end. While Efaw noted money isn’t an issue for the team, who doesn’t want extra money? Especially in an economy that all but discourages owning a NASCAR team.
With Honeycutt’s release, the team’s prize money at season’s end will take a massive hit, as it now relies on Mills to be the sole driver to make the drivers’ playoffs.
With Currey as one of the drivers in the all-star No. 44, what becomes of the truck now? Chastain still has one more race on his schedule, as does Josh Bilicki, so the No. 44 will be out for at least two more races. Then there’s Jones and Phil Gould’s son Matt Gould, who could potentially make some more starts too. But does the team find another driver that could fill out the rest of the races on the schedule to keep the No. 44 in the owners’ point hunt? Or does it revert to part-time and focus all its efforts on the Nos. 42 and 45 for the rest of the season?
The latter option would be crazy given that it intended to have four full-time trucks this season — to end the season with two full-time trucks and one part-time would be a shell of what Niece was hoping for this season.
Another thing to consider — who becomes Niece’s flagship driver with Honeycutt out of the fleet? While he was winless, Honeycutt was far and away the flag bearer for the Niece stable, filling the role that Hocevar vacated two years prior at the end of 2023. Mills doesn’t have race-winning speed, and Currey already tried being the flag bearer last season and was rewarded with a part-time (albeit nearly full-time) ride this season.
Chevrolet doesn’t have a whole lot of prospects to choose from, either. There are only a few ARCA Menards Series drivers who are legitimately Truck Series-ready, namely Lavar Scott. It could try to poach another driver from another manufacturer or sign one of its drivers away from one of its other teams, such as Spire Motorsports or McAnally-Hilgemann Racing.
But it seems as if Niece has to find its identity heading into 2026, because it’s clear it’s been a little lost at sea since Chastain and especially Hocevar exited full-time status in favor of a Cup ride.
Follow @AnthonyDamcott on X.
Anthony Damcott joined Frontstretch in March 2022. Currently, he is an editor and co-authors Fire on Fridays (Fridays); he is also the primary Truck Series reporter/writer and serves as an at-track reporter. He has also assisted with short track content and social media, among other duties he takes/has taken on for the site. In 2025, he became an official member of the National Motorsports Press Association. A proud West Virginia Wesleyan College alum from Akron, Ohio, Anthony is now a grad student. He is a theatre actor and fight coordinator in his free time.
You can keep up with Anthony by following @AnthonyDamcott on X.