One year ago, Kaden Honeycutt finished third in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship, two spots behind Corey Heim and the No. 11 Tricon Garage Toyota.
Can’t beat ’em? Join ’em.
Honeycutt won the 2026 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title Friday at Homestead-Miami Speedway, winning the season finale and outlasting Front Row Motorsports’ Layne Riggs over a thrilling seven-race Chase. The championship comes in his second full-time season, bookending a story of perseverance for the once little-known driver.
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“Man, this is amazing. I’ve worked so damn hard to be here,” Honeycutt said, gasping for breath just moments after exiting his truck on the Homestead frontstretch. “Thank you to every owner, thank you everybody that’s let me drive the race car for them, whether it was dirt, asphalt, road course, doesn’t matter. That is because of you guys I’m sitting right here with this group behind me as champions.”
Honeycutt secured the title with relative ease at Homestead. Though he made the race-winning pass with 15 laps to go, Riggs suffered two blown tires, falling several laps off the pace. It would’ve taken remarkable circumstances for Riggs to mount a comeback over the final 100 circuits at the Florida oval.
Honeycutt admitted that he would’ve preferred to duke it out all night with the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports driver. But when Riggs suffered his issues, it allowed Honeycutt to relax.
“I really just want to make sure I honestly just finished the race,” Honeycutt said in his post-race press conference. “I knew the race wasn’t over. I mean, anything could happen to me. I could blow an engine. I could blow a transmission. I could blow a right front tire and destroy the truck.
“I just was trying to stay mentally focused. I mean, I lost it when I took the white flag when I knew it was over. It was pretty awesome.”
WATCH: Honeycutt talks mindset shift | Watch NASCAR video highlights
Riggs was the most dominant driver over the first 18 races this season, winning six times to earn the No. 1 seed for The Chase presented by Mobil 1. Honeycutt put up stout numbers himself, winning twice for his first two national-series victories. The Willow Park, Texas, native scored his first win in May at Watkins Glen International, coming mere hours after his first career ARCA Menards Series win at the 2.45-mile road course.
That victory in New York’s Finger Lakes Region was the turning point — at least crew chief Scott Zipadelli thought so.
“I could see a big weight lifted off of Kaden’s shoulders,” said Zipadelli, who suffered serious injuries in an off-season accident and missed the first three races. “I think he felt he had to perform at the level we were when Corey drove last year. It was kind of smooth sailing right after Watkins Glen. We just let our heads down, kept working hard, and Kaden did an amazing job of growing in all kinds of areas and aspects as a young man and a race car driver.
“I’ll be honest with you, this is probably one of the most rewarding championships I’ve had in that aspect.”
But even though Honeycutt scored top fives in three of the next four, he found that May stretch of races as a wake-up call.
“I needed to still work and figure out what I needed to do to be better,” he said. “I think a little bit was pressure, but I think a lot of that was perfecting race craft, getting better at what I needed in my truck. Our connection getting a lot better at the race track and off the race track definitely helped that situation, too.
“I definitely had the expectation to be a champion. It wasn’t because the vehicles weren’t going to be fast enough. It was because I didn’t do my job, right? I didn’t want that. My desire to win is more than probably anybody you can ask for.”
MORE: All Craftsman Truck Series champions
Honeycutt’s second truck triumph came dominantly, leading 225 of 250 laps at Richmond Raceway in August.
That was the moment he felt like he was a true championship contender.
“We sucked at IRP and North Wilkesboro for no reason,” Honeycutt said. “We figured it out what it was. Had a new left-side tire that we struggled on the short track stuff, but then we went to work, Scott went to work and the guys, and we got much better at Richmond. Our short track stuff came alive a lot better.”
Richmond set a tone for the postseason.
A tone that he certainly lived up to.
Starting The Chase with an eighth-place finish, Honeycutt earned top fives in the next four, including wins at Kansas Speedway and Phoenix Raceway. He had one of the best trucks in the antepenultimate race at Talladega Superspeedway but slid back to fifth in the closing moments despite leading late.
Honeycutt was hardly immune to adversity, either. At Charlotte, he brushed the wall while battling Riggs for the victory, opening the door for the No. 34 to capitalize and cut the championship gap to 17 points. At Martinsville, late contact from Tristan McKee shuffled Honeycutt from the top five to 14th, trimming his advantage over Riggs to 20 points heading into Homestead.
Riggs needed to play catch-up from the get-go. In the opener at Bristol, the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports team had a loose wheel in the final stage, finishing several laps down in 32nd. A bounce back seemed in order at Kansas, but while battling Honeycutt for the win, Riggs slapped the wall and dropped back to finish 19th — another costly mishap.
Riggs won the next race at Charlotte to cut his deficit to 17 points, but Honeycutt rebuilt his advantage to 43 after Talladega. Even after Riggs dominated Martinsville and reduced the gap to 20, he still faced an uphill battle heading into Homestead.
Honeycutt’s remarkable title-clinching performance comes a year after heartbreak. But he was never supposed to be this close.
In 2025, Honeycutt planned to embark on a full campaign in Niece Motorsports’ No. 45 Chevrolet. He raced for Al Niece in the first 16 events, climbing as high as fifth in points by the midpoint of summer. But before Watkins Glen, Niece released him, saying that Honeycutt had signed with a different team and manufacturer for 2026.
Young’s Motorsports picked him up for a one-off at The Glen to remain eligible for the postseason. For the playoffs, he shifted to Halmar-Friesen Racing’s No. 52 Toyota in place of Stewart Friesen — who had suffered severe injuries in a dirt modified crash in Canada — for the rest of the season.
In his eight races, Honeycutt finished no worse than 18th, recording three straight top 10s to finish the campaign and posing a serious threat to Corey Heim’s championship hopes.
Heim won a series-record 12 races en route to a championship last year — all with the Scott Zipadelli-led No. 11 team that Honeycutt has now driven to a championship.
WATCH: Scott Zipadelli talks title
“I put myself on a pedestal that if you’re not perfect, then you need to get your butt to work and figure out what it takes to win,” Honeycutt said. “Just to be able to work with a race team like this, I never would have thought I’d be able to race for Toyota or Tricon, or let alone a guy like Scott and this race team. It’s been an amazing time. To be honest, I can sit here and say I was not a champion driver to start this season. I really took losses to the heart really, really bad. I gave bad interviews, bad looks outside of the race track. I didn’t handle ’em very well.
“I went to work really hard, perfected my craft a lot better. He worked with me on sim, outside the shop, getting together and talking about life, things like that. I think that can transfer to the race shop, also driving the vehicle. I really think it has for me.”
Before embarking on full-time NASCAR racing, Honeycutt raced three part-time seasons in the Truck Series. He first joined Niece as a driver in 2023, also taking on a shop mechanic and fabrication role while making additional starts for Young’s and Roper Racing.
Honeycutt is a former CARS Pro Late Model Tour champion. As he cut his teeth in the regional ranks, he raced for RFK Racing in the eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing Series.
And the emotions of that journey came flooding out Friday night.
“This is for all the dirt track racers back at home in Texas that I raced with when I was 12 years old all the way until 17,” he said. “I worked with my daddy in the shop for so dang long to even be in the dirt track business running Friday and Saturday, running a stock car, running a modified, anything I could hop in.
“I moved to North Carolina to work on the trucks. The only opportunity I had to was to work on the vehicles I was going to drive.”
Less than five years ago, Honeycutt was hardly known. Now, he’s a Truck Series champion — and the sky is the limit.