LAKEVILLE, Conn. — Like a microcosm of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season, Kaden Honeycutt and Layne Riggs raced along parallel paths in Saturday’s show at Lime Rock Park. On the plus side, both spent time leading laps, both secured stage wins and both eventually clinched spots in the Chase postseason.
On the negative side is where their parallel paths became all crossed up.
Riggs and Honeycutt kept their 1-2 hold on the Truck Series standings, but their two trucks came together in the wake of a calamitous final-stage restart in Saturday’s LiUNA 150. Honeycutt emerged with the better end of the damage after their off-course excursion in the sweeping first turn, rallying his No. 11 Tricon Garage Toyota for a third-place finish. Riggs’ No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford was more severely bashed, and the series points leader limped to a 23rd-place result, the top driver one lap down.
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Both expressed frustration after the contact that thwarted their days on Lap 75 of 100, but neither blamed the other. Honeycutt walked over to Riggs’ No. 34 team hauler after a cooling-off period for both, and the two drivers shook hands after a brief discussion that never became heated. The only time it became animated was when the two made racing gestures, motioning about how they had turned the wheel after contact and the trajectory of other cars on the final restart.
“It is what it is,” Honeycutt told NASCAR.com as he helped his crew push his No. 11 Toyota back to the garage. “I know Layne wouldn’t do something like that on purpose, so I’m sure he got hit from the back and it jumbled all of us up there in the front and unfortunately got us wrecked and him wrecked and a bunch of others. So that was definitely unfortunate. But had a great truck, man. Mobil 1, thanks for the support coming aboard this weekend, Safelite, Toyota Racing, Tricon Garage. My whole pit crew is our shop crew, and it was a tough day for them today. I appreciate them sticking with me, and man, it’s battered up and bruised, but it’s good top five. We’ll take it.”
Riggs didn’t have a much clearer view of what had transpired, with his No. 34 part of the aftermath behind a coming-together of Gio Ruggiero and Cole Butcher that sent race leader Stewart Friesen spinning. By the time the chain reaction fully played out, Honeycutt had cut to the inside where Riggs’ truck — under intense pressure and pushing from the rest of the pack — was there to meet him.
“I didn’t see a whole lot,” Riggs told NASCAR.com. “I was in line on the bottom behind the 11. Me and him were going to both drive to the front, and next thing I know, I was jacked up, wrecking him, wrecking the guy in front of him. I need to look at the replay, but I have no clue who ran into me from behind, or even if it wasn’t from two or three rows back, I have no clue. We got back there, then we were just trying to salvage at that point. I thought I had an alternator issue. We were mid-battery change and didn’t get it changed and went a lap down. That’s very unfortunate, and I feel like it could have been avoided. So just kind of frustrating when you’re helpless in the seat.”
Riggs said he felt his conversation with Honeycutt was a productive one.
“I think me and him both feel the same, that we both got run over,” Riggs said. “He knew right away. I was like, ‘Hey, it wasn’t me.’ He said, ‘I know it wasn’t you. I know it was behind you, and you got ran over.’ Just to try to get an understanding of why we can’t get through Turn 1 when we feel like we put ourselves in good spots, trying to be safe and get our way back to the front, we both just get wrecked. So I need to see a replay, see what happened, see who either made a mistake or who was too aggressive when it didn’t need to happen.”
Honeycutt and Riggs were the only leaders through the first two stages, but the strategy tilted after a Lap 51 wreck on the frontstretch prompted a caution period just before the Stage 2 end. A handful of teams — including eventual runner-up Landen Lewis, who was involved in the stack-up — took the opportunity to flip the stage when the front-runners pitted at the intermission.
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That shift put Honeycutt 10th and Riggs 11th after their stops for service before the start of the final stage, and eventually in the heart of the mishap that curbed their dominance. Honeycutt’s comeback was the more effective of the two, and the 54 points he earned Saturday were second only to the 65-point payday for race winner Grant Enfinger.
“We’ve got to focus forward when things happen and they don’t go our way, and whatever we can do to bounce back and get points out of that, for sure,” Honeycutt said. “So we’ll take it. Unfortunately, it’s not a win, but we’ll go on and finish and go to North Wilkesboro next.”
Saturday was the last of the four road-course races on this year’s Craftsman Truck Series schedule. Riggs had won two of the previous three (St. Petersburg, San Diego), bookending the other — a breakthrough triumph for Honeycutt at Watkins Glen.
Riggs still holds a convincing advantage in the Truck Series standings, but that margin shrank Saturday from a 65-point cushion to 44. He spoke pre-race Friday about a renewed emphasis on minimizing both miscues and bad breaks. Saturday brought some of those bad breaks, snapping Riggs’ five-race streak of top fives, but the 24-year-old driver was eager for a return to North Wilkesboro Speedway next Saturday (12:30 p.m. ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) for a potential rebound.
“We’ve still got a pretty good lead right now,” Riggs said. “It’s just frustrating when you definitely are bleeding points when you don’t feel like you have to, or we could have salvaged a top-five day. So that’s very disappointing, but yeah, North Wilkesboro has been a good track to us. We finished third there in ‘24 and finished second there in ‘25, so one spot better, right?”