A week ago, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Chase, the series playoff, was a 17-point fight between Kaden Honeycutt and Layne Riggs. After Friday night at Phoenix Raceway, Honeycutt leads by 39, and the gap behind the two of them is far bigger than the gap between them. Christian Eckes is third, 112 back. Chandler Smith is fourth, 117 back.
With three races left, the question is no longer who can catch the top two. It is whether Talladega, next Friday, lets Riggs back in.
Honeycutt won the Zero Carbon Bioethanol 150 on pit road. During the caution that ended the second stage, his crew got the No. 11 TRICON Garage Toyota out first among the trucks taking four tires. Stewart Friesen, on two, came out ahead and lost the lead on the restart. Honeycutt led the last 53 laps and beat Eckes by 1.556 seconds. Riggs started on the pole, led the first 43 laps, finished third and lost 22 points to Honeycutt.
Phoenix was the opposite of Charlotte. There, Honeycutt was leading with seven laps left when his truck slid into the outside wall and Riggs went by. He said afterward he had been air-blocking, placing his truck to take the air off the one behind, and should have run his own race. On Friday, he said, he did not "look back in the mirror like I did last week."
No third contender closed the gap. Going in, the case for one was Smith, who had a 3.6 average finish at Phoenix in five starts, with a 2021 win. He was penalized twice during the stage-break stops, for too many crew members over the wall and for pitting before pit road was open, restarted at the back and finished 15th. Eckes finished second for the third straight race, the first driver to do that since Johnny Sauter in 2017, and still has no win this season.
Dylan "Mamba" Smith called it. On Episode 4 of The Grand National Show: Truck Series, he took Honeycutt to win Phoenix. Davey Segal took Riggs, and Chris Wilner took Ty Majeski, who swept both stages, the segments that pay points before the finish, led 49 laps and finished fourth.
Talladega is where Honeycutt himself says it could change. "You can go from running first to 35th really quickly," he said. His plan there is to finish and collect stage points. The Trucks run first that weekend, before the O'Reilly and Cup races, so there is no earlier race to learn from. "So we'll be the guinea pigs for that," he said.
The Love's RV Stop 225 is Friday, Oct. 23, at 4 p.m. ET on FS1. Asked how many points he wants out of it, Honeycutt said, "I can sit here and tell you I want 75 points. But at Talladega, that's probably not going to be possible."