MARTINSVILLE, Va. — Twenty points separate Kaden Honeycutt and Layne Riggs — the only two drivers still eligible to win the 2026 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship after Friday’s slugfest at Martinsville Speedway.
The title fight saw its fair share of ebbs and flows around “The Paperclip” as Riggs dominated the majority of Friday’s 200-lap contest, leading 156 circuits and sweeping the stages for an extra 20 points in his pocket in The Chase presented by Mobil 1.
RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Martinsville
Riggs nearly rocketed to the victory, but a poor restart after the ninth and final caution of the night knocked him to third as his Front Row Motorsports teammate Chandler Smith and ThorSport Racing’s Ben Rhodes surged to the front of the field. Further back, a worse restart for Honeycutt plummeted the No. 11 Toyota from sixth to 14th after late contact with 16-year-old phenom Tristan McKee bumped Honeycutt up the track with little time remaining.
After entering Friday’s race with a 43-point advantage, Honeycutt now holds a slimmer, far less comfortable lead heading into the Nov. 6 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway (6:30 p.m. ET, FS1, NRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). All others behind Honeycutt and Riggs were eliminated from championship contention Friday night.
“[There’s] definitely nowhere safe. I’ve seen a lot of points made up tonight,” Honeycutt said. “He made up I think 23, if I’m correct. We had a mediocre night and he had some good stage runs there. And Homestead is a great track for us. I’m looking forward to going back to mile-and-a-half and be strong there.”
Honeycutt and Riggs have exchanged blows all Chase long — Honeycutt has won two of the six postseason races and Riggs has won once. Their mindset is identical heading into the finale.
“Just go win it,” Honeycutt said.
“We’re going to go win it,” Riggs said.
Honeycutt has the upper hand, if only slightly, heading to South Florida. He intends to build that gap from the drop of the green flag.
“(I) feel like if you just go out there and just play with the 20-point gap, you’re not maximizing your day. And our team’s all about winning,” Honeycutt said. “And if we can go out on top by winning the race and executing next week — my pit crew did an excellent job again tonight, as they usually do to help me out, and yeah, we’ll just go and do that.”
Riggs, the series’ winningest driver with seven victories in 2026 and the No. 1 seed entering The Chase, has seen the advantage of winning firsthand. Winners are paid a minimum of 55 points, a 20-point advantage over finishing second, which pays 35 points.
“With this format having 20 bonus points, it’s pretty much a winner-take-all again, in my opinion,” Riggs said. “Instead of having four [drivers], it’s it’s two this time. So we’re gonna go win. That’s all I can go do. Go win — at least go match him in stage points. We can’t have a bad qualifying effort or have something bad on pit road. Gotta go there and execute. And as you saw tonight, he’s not as dominant as some people think. He had a little issue, which kind of helped us out as well. But man, it would have been nice to win for me. We would have been in the plus right now.”
Riggs lamented his lane choice for the final restart of the evening, taking the top lane against the judgement of his No. 34 Front Row Motorsports team.
“I wanted to take the top. My team kind of differed against that,” Riggs said. ‘They didn’t want me to take the top. And you put the control of your race in the guy on the inside of you’s hands. He can use you up. Who knows if he would have played nice or not? Congrats to Chandler on the win. It’s been a little while for those guys, but man, those bonus points really would have been nice. And even more than that, I wanted a grandfather clock really, really bad. We led so many laps. I’m just disappointed.”
Honeycutt was also frustrated with McKee following the race, exiting his Tricon Garage entry and walking over to McKee’s No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet on pit road to better understand what happened. In short, McKee couldn’t get to the bottom of the racetrack because Ty Majeski was to his left. Honeycutt was unaware in the moment.
“I hate what happened into (Turn) 1,” Honeycutt said. “I saw the replay and Ty was down there. Tristan was trying to give him some room, and I closed off the hole a little bit and I never got the call I was three-wide. So yeah, just a sucky deal for sure. But got bailed out there. Thankfully the 38 won and helped us out a little bit for next week.”
McKee, who at 16 years, 2 months and 27 days old became the youngest pole-sitter in NASCAR national series history earlier on Friday, understood Honeycutt’s initial reaction and indicated all was good between the fellow competitors.
“Yeah, I don’t think he was really mad at me; just probably more mad with the situation of the championship deal,” McKee said. “There was nothing I really could have done differently there. I mean, I’ll go back and look at it, obviously. … I mean, sorry to the (No.) 11 guys, but there’s nothing I really could have done, and he understands that I think. He wasn’t too mad, obviously.”
