Saturday’s (June 6) NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Michigan International Speedway will bring to a close six consecutive weeks of Truck Series racing, the longest such stretch of the 2026 season and, in my opinion, the most important.
The only other time the Truck Series will race for six consecutive weeks will be in The Chase from Bristol Motor Speedway on Sept. 17 to the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Nov. 6. But by that point, the contenders will have separated themselves from the pretenders, and the race for the championship will be on. There will be no more time for learning or trial and error.
After Saturday’s race, the Truck Series will take a one-week break before returning at the inaugural race at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego. That will be followed by a 22-day hiatus before the series returns at Lime Rock on July 11.
So, without further ado, here are three major things we’ve learned from the past five weeks of Truck racing going into a sixth straight race at Michigan.
It’s Kaden Honeycutt and Layne Riggs‘ world. We’re just living in it.
I wrote about this more in-depth last week, but it’s clear that Honeycutt and Riggs are the championship favorites. I’d be more surprised to see a driver not named Riggs or Honeycutt win the championship than I’d be if my beleaguered Arkansas Razorbacks football team win the national championship in January.
Riggs just pulled off arguably the greatest drive of the season so far with a come- from-behind win at Nashville Superspeedway his third of the year. Honeycutt only has one win so far in 2026, but he’s still second in the standings and has more top 10s (eight) than any driver this year, even after a mechanical failure knocked him out at Nashville.
The points reset at the start of The Chase will bunch the field back up, but given that Honeycutt has a full race on third-place Chandler Smith right now, it’d be shocking if the title fight isn’t a seven-race slugfest between Nos. 34 and 11. The last seven races of the regular season to see who gets the top seed in The Chase are incredibly important.
CR7 Motorsports has taken a massive step back
The success story of Grant Enfinger and a Cinderella organization in CR7 Motorsports was endearing in 2024 when Enfinger won two races and made the Championship 4. He had another successful season in 2025, scoring one more top 10 (14) than he had the previous season and finishing a strong seventh in points.
But 2026 has seen the No. 9 team take a major step backwards. Enfinger is still in the mix for a Chase berth and will, in my opinion, do enough to earn one. He’s 12th in the standings and only 26 points out of the top 10.
However, he only has three top 10 finishes and led a paltry eight laps. His average finish of 19.5 is an increase of over seven positions from last year and nearly nine from 2024, thanks to six finishes of 22nd or worse.
A slight regression from Enfinger and the CR7 group would’ve been understandable this year. But I know very few people who expected the No. 9 team to be so far removed from where they were over the past two seasons.
If anyone can touch Riggs and Honeycutt, it’s Christian Eckes
Eckes was rather pedestrian through the first six races of the year, scoring three top 10s but looking nothing like the dominant version of himself that challenged Corey Heim throughout 2024.
Over the last five races, however, Eckes has come to life. He has five top 10s in the last six races and has risen from sixth to third in the points standings, even leading 33 laps at Texas.
Bristol is the only race so far this season where the No. 91 has looked like one of the best trucks, but Eckes is now once more putting together races with excellent consistency. That will pay off in The Chase, and if he can find victory lane a time or two, he could sneak into the championship fight with Riggs and Honeycutt.
It’s difficult to say definitively who the driver is that can beat Riggs and Honeycutt for the championship. Conventional wisdom might say it’s Riggs’ teammate in Daytona winner Chandler Smith, 2024 champion Ty Majeski or a hot prospect in Gio Ruggiero.
But Eckes knows what it’s like to be in the thick of a Truck Series title fight. If McAnally-Hilgemann Racing can give him trucks that are capable of winning, I believe he’s the only man who stands between a 1-2 finish in the standings for Riggs and Honeycutt.
A member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Samuel also covers NASCAR for Yardbarker, Field Level Media, and Heavy Sports. He will attend the University of Arkansas in the fall of 2025.
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