RIDGEWAY, Va. – It was only two months ago that Kaden Honeycutt was let go from his full-time team at Niece Motorsports in the middle of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season. The departure was considered a sure invalidation from this year’s playoff season and thus the championship hunt.
Yet there he was two months later at Martinsville Speedway on Friday, Oct. 24, smiling on pit road next to his Halmar-Friesen Racing Toyota after the season’s penultimate race.
And above all else, he was Championship 4-bound.
“I was just a dirt track kid from Texas, and I didn’t really have any business being a NASCAR,” Honeycutt said to media. “Thanks to all the nights of my dad out there in the shop at 2 and 3 o’clock in the morning working on dirt cars every night, and to all the people that I’ve been able to race for my career and get to this point to have the opportunity to go to Phoenix [Raceway] now.”
Though earlier in the night, it certainly didn’t seem to be going that way.
Honeycutt had started the night in the Championship 4 with a small cushion of only five points separating him from the playoff cut line. From the green flag, it was a round robin of the shuffling of the playoff field.
It almost came to an end on lap 74, however, when Honeycutt made contact with fellow playoff driver Rajah Caruth. The result was a bizarre incident that saw the Spire Motorsports driver cut a tire in the next corner, sending him into the outside wall. The resulting damage was enough to end the No. 71 team’s night.
“I was pretty mad at myself, to be honest with you,” Honeycutt recalled. “I really hate that. I didn’t want any of that to happen. I know me and him came off the corner pretty close, and I really just need to look and see if he was if he tracked out enough or if I just came up into him.
“I’m definitely going to talk to him about that. I hate that it happened.”
Caruth was disappointed in the result but not angry with Honeycutt.
“The truck wasn’t driving the same,” Caruth told media outside of the care center. “So I just was trying to do the best with it, and obviously Kaden slid up, but it happens, and it’s inside racing at Martinsville, so that happens.”
Afterward, Honeycutt shook off the incident and continued his night in the top five after multiple pit stops and caution flag periods. However, despite the consistency of the No. 52 Toyota, his playoff rivals Layne Riggs and Ty Majeski were there with him, and with only 10 laps to go, the Texan was only one point above the cut line.
There were only five laps remaining when the event’s penultimate caution flag waved, and Honeycutt, who was still only one point to the good, ran third as Riggs was fifth behind him.
The final restart decided their fates, and spotter Chris Lambert gave Honeycutt simple instructions on the radio.
“All Lambert told me was to, ‘Don’t lose the fight. Fight like hell,'” Honeycutt said.
With only two laps to go, however, Riggs gained two positions while Honeycutt only gained one, meaning the Nos. 34 and 52 were tied in points coming to the line. The tiebreaker was whoever had the higher finish in the Round of 8, and both drivers earned their best results on Friday night at Martinsville.
But Riggs finished third, and Honeycutt finished second — his best career result — and beat the Front Row Motorsports driver by only one position in the tiebreaker.
“I don’t even know if the Truck Series points have been this close coming into Martinsville,” Honeycutt said. “So yeah, just a unique situation, and that’s how competitive it has been this year between all eight of us. I mean, that’s pretty insane.”
Honeycutt, who didn’t have a job for a few days in August, now heads to Phoenix racing for a championship, and according to him, it’s going to take a win to do earn the title.
“Statistically it’s my best track, so I’m pretty excited for that,” Honeycutt said. “I like Phoenix a lot. As you all know, it’s pretty chaotic on restarts.
“We’ll just have to go in with an open mind, and I’m going to walk in the garage next week and just try to have fun and not try to do anything different. I need to beat these three guys now and just try to beat the whole field and see if we can come away with the win and also the championship, because I think that’s what it’ll take next week.”
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loud column, co-host of the Frontstretch Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT