CONCORD, N.C. — The pressure of a 40-point swing weighed heavily under the lights in Friday evening’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Chase race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, presented by Mobil 1.
Points leader Kaden Honeycutt sought to hold a sizable advantage over No. 1 seed Layne Riggs as the two swapped the lead throughout the 134-lapper at the 1.5-mile oval, but with six laps to go, Honeycutt’s No. 11 Tricon Garage Toyota slid into the wall in Turns 3 and 4, allowing Riggs to storm to the lead and take the victory — his first in The Chase.
Riggs cut the points lead to 17, which would’ve been over 50 points had Honeycutt won instead.
Charlotte marked a swing-and-a-miss for Honeycutt, who finished third. He took all the blame for losing the race late.
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“Too much mirror driving on my end,” Honeycutt said. “Seeing the replay, I thought he was closer than that to me. I thought he was actually taking the air off my spoiler, but he definitely wasn’t. I just was in between both lanes. I didn’t do the best job of that.”
Honeycutt and Riggs split the first two stages. Riggs took the opening frame before the sun went fully down, but as the gray skies gave way to darkness, Honeycutt’s No. 11 took over. Honeycutt led a race-high 85 laps and took the Stage 2 win with eyes set on a second consecutive checkered flag to balloon his championship lead.
However, a pair of cautions in the final 20 laps hampered Honeycutt’s advantage over Riggs. A multitruck wreck with 15 laps to go brought the field to a halt for 13 minutes.
Honeycutt fired off well on the final restart with 11 to go, but Riggs stayed in the tire tracks of the No. 11 and, inching closer and closer to Honeycutt. That ultimately caused Honeycutt to make the race-losing mistake that took him out of contention and let Christian Eckes by to take second.
“The first lap I was fine,” Honeycutt said of the final restart. “The second lap I was creeping a little tight and I don’t know if that heat cycle helped him and it made me a little bit worse. But I don’t know. I think I just panicked too much when he was within a truck or two and he was catching the draft. I probably should have faked top and then went to the bottom and run my own line, or I should have just committed to the top. I was too much in between, too much in my head on what I was supposed to be doing. So yeah, just definitely a shame. It’s all me on that for sure.”
Still, Honeycutt maintained his points lead, and has placed better than Riggs in two of the first three races to open The Chase.
But the Texas native was adamant that even a third-place finish was not strong enough for his standards – especially if he wants to lift the championship trophy.
“As far as my perspective, I think if you do anything less than try to win, you know, settle for third, fourth, and fifth throughout the day, that’s not what we try to come here to do,” Honeycutt said. “I feel like if we go out and win races and build that 15-point gap and have good stages, he saw what it did at Kansas. I think me and him agreed on it to a certain point. When I got in the fence and I realized I was getting free, I wanted to make sure I hit the right-rear tail and not the right front, and had a right front go down. That would have been significantly worse.
“We’ve raced really hard in late-model stuff, and it’s no different in this. He knows and I know, if we both get out front, we’re probably checking out, and it happened.”
MORE: Truck Series standings
But despite departing Charlotte still the points leader, Honeycutt believes he doesn’t have any sort of advantage. He’s been on both sides — being chased and being the chaser — for the series advantage. Anything that happens, he says, is of his own doing — and nobody else’s.
“I picture myself 10th in points and fight for every point I can get in stages, then, just go after the win,” Honeycutt said. “I think if you do anything else other than that, you don’t maximize your day fully. I will absolutely never be hunted. I will hunt everybody — 35 race trucks on this race track every single week. I felt like at the end, he (Riggs) wasn’t hunting me down. I just made a mistake and screwed up, and just wasn’t in my own mental headspace where I needed to be at. Definitely full blame on me for that. Nothing else.”