CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Kaden Honeycutt enters the Chase for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship second in the standings.
Honeycutt, who replaced reigning series champion Corey Heim in the No. 11 TRICON Garage Toyota, won twice during the regular season, and enters the seven-race run to the title 25 points behind series leader Layne Riggs.
While Honeycutt is short on post-season experience, his team is not as crew chief Scott Zipadelli and the team are defending the title they earned with Heim.
“It’s definitely very valuable,” Honeycutt said. “He (Zipadelli) has brought a lot to the table as far as my racecraft and improving things that I’ve needed to be better on. And I feel like the races that we’ve won outside of the Truck Series is because of Scott. He’s taught me a lot of things on racecraft, managing a race, how to manage sim and things like that. He’s just an amazing guy outside of the racetrack too.
“We’ve had a really good relationship going through this year. I feel like I’ve given up a couple of races for him that I could’ve won, but we have seven weeks to go out and win him another championship. I don’t think there’s one weak spot on our schedule going into this Chase, so looking forward to it, and hopefully we can win it all.”
Honeycutt won the final regular-season race for the series at Richmond Raceway in mid-August.
“It was definitely good, for sure. I think as far as for me, I haven’t done a truck race like that before, so it was really good. We were struggling at Wilkesboro and IRP before that. And to go to another short track that was like IRP and to figure out the things we had wrong, and to win at Richmond was really, really cool,” Honeycutt said. “To do it in the fashion that we did just showed how relentless the team is and how they never give up and they will always strive for it and strive for greatness.
“So yeah, it was really good for us at Richmond, good for me confidence-wise, knowing that we absolutely can do this stuff every single week. Just need to put our mind to it and we can accomplish anything that we can set for it. I think we can do that at Bristol, and going forward after that it should be no problem.”
For the Truck Series, the Chase begins Thursday night at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.
“Yeah, absolutely. Bristol is pretty changing, for sure. It can make or break your Chase just like every racetrack can,” Honeycutt said. “Bristol is very high intense. It’s a short track and it’s going to be nonstop 250 laps bare-knuckle racing, so looking forward to it. Always love going to Bristol no matter what the occasion is. I think we had a good strong, spring performance. Not the finish we wanted, but I think we have a really good package going this weekend and kicking it off the right way.”
With five weeks off between Richmond and Bristol, Honeycutt stayed busy racing late models with various other series.
“I’ve been busy. I’ve been staying in a race car the whole time and just trying to stay locked in and prepared for the seven-week stretch,” Honeycutt said. “Trying not to focus on anything else but winning a championship. I didn’t want to take those three weeks off and just not have my hands on a race car or be locked into a race mentality situation. I just stayed in it and looking forward to going to Bristol locked in for sure.”
