Truckin’ Thursdays: Attaboy, Kaden Honeycutt

Last week in this column, I wrote about why I believed Kaden Honeycutt ought to be at least a little easier on himself for not yet having won a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race.

One day later, he proved me right.

Honeycutt lamented that he had to find a way to close out races after finishing third in the May 1 Truck Series race at Texas. It’s not as if his self-assessment was wrong, but it was still disheartening to hear the series points leader and heir to Corey Heim‘s No. 11 truck make those comments.

If I were to compare Honeycutt’s situation of taking over a championship-level ride from an elite talent, I’d liken it to Joey Logano taking over at Joe Gibbs Racing for Tony Stewart or Chase Elliott jumping into Jeff Gordon‘s iconic No. 24. Expectations are going to be huge externally anyways. Adding onto them with massive internal expectations may not be the healthiest thing.

Honeycutt’s self-inflicted narrative about not being able to win races was shattered by the man himself last weekend. His weekend at Watkins Glen got off to a phenomenal start, as he won the ARCA Menards Series race.

Honeycutt then went toe-to-toe with, and straight up beat, Connor Zilisch to earn his first Truck Series win, which was followed up by Honeycutt making good on his promise to shotgun a beer upon his first win.

What Honeycutt did the next day, however, is arguably even more impressive. Not only did he race in a pair of CARS Tour races at Ace Speedway the next evening, likely with some beverages still in his system, but he won both of them.

That’s four wins in just two days for a driver, who, less than two weeks ago, was questioning his ability to close out races and get to victory lane.

“I pretty much crashed when I took the checkered in the last race,” Honeycutt said Tuesday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio. “There was nothing else I had left. I almost fell off the car trying to stand back up on the side because of how much energy I didn’t have left. It was really awesome. We had fun with it back at the house. I was like, ‘I really need to go to sleep eventually.’ First Truck win, it only happens one time. Made sure I soaked it in as much possible.”

What makes the first half of Honeycutt’s quadruple-header wins that much more impressive is that he is by no means an expert road racer, saying as much in his post-race interview with FOX. Road course racing is not his strength behind the wheel, yet in a Truck field that featured Zilisch, Ross Chastain, Carson Hocevar, Brent Crews and Shane van Gisbergen, among others, it was Honeycutt who scored the win.

“You don’t go to any race and go, ‘Well, I’m going to try and see if I can run fifth this week ’cause that’s really all I got,'” Honeycutt said. “I had a really good ROVAL race last year with the 52 group. I feel like we had a good street course at St. Pete. I knew we could run really well. I just needed to pull out the pace in myself. It was a really good weekend. Everything helped us at the end. Driving back through the field showed how good our truck was really good.”

Forgotten in the spectacle of Honeycutt’s first win was the aforementioned drive back to the front, which occurred after Honeycutt received a penalty in stage two. Despite admitting that carving his way through the field had not previously been a strength of his at road courses, Honeycutt prevailed.

All this is to say that Honeycutt is, despite his own occasional self-doubts, an excellent driver and a prospect who is definitely worth keeping an eye on. Four wins in a span of two days is an incredible accomplishment, and even more impressive given two of those wins came on a road course.

And oh-by-the-way, Honeycutt is still the Truck Series points leader and arguably the series title favorite, holding a 29-point lead over second-place Chandler Smith going into Friday’s (May 15) race at Dover Motor Speedway.

So attaboy, Honeycutt. Shotgun another beer or two before Friday’s race at Dover. You’ve earned it.