MARTINSVILLE, Va. — A tiebreaker was needed to decide the 2025 Championship 4 for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
The beneficiary? Kaden Honeycutt, whose second-place finish was enough to earn the nod over third-place finisher Layne Riggs to advance to the title round from Friday’s Round of 8 finale at Martinsville Speedway. He joins Tyler Ankrum, Martinsville winner Corey Heim and defending series champ Ty Majeski in this year’s championship quartet.
RELATED: Race results | At-track photos
Honeycutt’s emotions were obvious climbing from the No. 52 Halmar Friesen Racing Toyota — a truck he never expected to drive to start the season. The 22-year-old Texan began the year driving the No. 45 Chevrolet for Niece Motorsports, but his decision to sign with Toyota for the 2026 season led Niece to release him before the Aug. 8 race at Watkins Glen International. After spending that race in the No. 02 Young’s Motorsports entry, Honeycutt pivoted to the No. 52 Toyota for the rest of the season with team co-owner and typical driver Stewart Friesen sidelined after a dirt-racing crash left him injured.
Those circumstances all flashed through Honeycutt’s mind after Friday’s race at Martinsville, now with a chance to chase a championship on the doorstep.
“It’s unbelievable, man,” Honeycutt said. “I should have very easily been on the couch in July after I made my decision on what to do. And I’m so grateful to be a part of Toyota and this amazing manufacturer. To carry on this championship now, we got a 50% chance of winning it at least. So I’m very much looking forward to next weekend. Regardless of how everything goes, I’m just extremely thankful.”
Just behind him at the checkered flag was Riggs. One point out entering the final lap, Riggs muscled past Brent Crews off the final corner to tie Honeycutt on points. But in the event of a tie, the edge goes to the driver who earned the best finish in the round, and both drivers earned their best at Martinsville on Friday.
Honeycutt said he was unaware just how close it was in the waning moments.
“All (spotter Chris) Lambert told me was don’t lose a spot, just fight like hell,” Honeycutt said. “And yeah, that last restart, I didn’t do the best job at executing that restart. I spun the tires a lot, and Corey did an excellent job of executing there. So yeah, just had to hold on and hope that everything worked out, and thankfully it did. Now we get to go have the chance to have fun next week and go try to mix it up.”
Riggs, a three-time winner this season, was “dejected” to miss the Championship 4, but ultimately felt bad for racing Crews so aggressively despite the stakes.
“I just don’t like racing like that,” Riggs said. “I want to race straight up and how it’s supposed to be, but I’m hearing, ‘got to get a spot; got to get one.’ I’m gonna do what my team tells me to do to get in this championship. And (I’m) roughing guys up I don’t really want to rough up. They’ve done nothing to me in the past. I just don’t like racing like that, man.”
Riggs said he would have carried that same disappointment even if he had advanced because he wants to race cleanly.
His race took a turn, though, on a Lap 29 restart. Leading the opening 27 laps, Riggs was on the front row in the inside lane, leading the field back to the green flag. But he struggled to shift his truck into both third and fourth gears. That caused a stack-up behind him with multiple trucks incurring damage, including playoff contenders Honeycutt, Rajah Caruth and Daniel Hemric.
“I don’t really know what happened on the restart,” Riggs said. “I mean, I’ve never missed a shift in the truck with these transmissions ever, and it just would not go into third gear. Wouldn’t go into fourth. Like, no matter what I’d do, it wouldn’t go into gear. I’ve never had that problem before. So, yeah, it just summarizes our Round of 8 of things that could have happened.”
Indeed, the No. 34 team struggled to find clean races in the opening two events of this semifinal round — with a strong argument that the events were out of Riggs’ control. Riggs started on the front row at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval on Oct. 3, but contact from Grant Enfinger turned Riggs sideways and into Heim, sending both trucks into the Turn 1 wall. He nearly recovered for a top-10 effort, but a mechanical issue in overtime plummeted him to a 21st-place finish. At Talladega Superspeedway on Oct. 17, Riggs was contacted by Front Row Motorsports teammate Chandler Smith on Lap 10, sending Riggs spinning before he eventually rebounded to finish fifth.
“We can’t look at tonight where it went wrong,” Riggs said. “You’ve got to look at the Roval, Lap 1. Break the sway bar, ride around in the back all day, break the axle. Go to Talladega, get turned on Lap 10. I mean, it’s really the culmination. I’m not going to place tonight (as) the reason why. That was our best race out of the Round of 8. Just a lot of things lead up to it.”
Ankrum, Heim, Honeycutt and Majeski will race for the 2025 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship at Phoenix Raceway next Friday (7:30 p.m. ET, FS1, NRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).