Here is the strange thing Kaden Honeycutt did over the last fifteen laps at Michigan on Saturday: he helped Corey Heim win the race, and then he tried to beat him.
Honeycutt pushed his TRICON Garage teammate to the front — the shove that put just enough distance on the leader to make the pass stick. Then, on the run to the checkered flag, in lapped traffic, Honeycutt went looking for the win himself, sliding to Heim's right rear on the final lap. Heim had to protect it. He did, by .065 of a second. And the truck Honeycutt was driving as he came after his teammate — the No. 11 — is the same one Heim drove to the championship a year ago.
"We discussed it pre-race that we were going to race it out in the end and that's what we did," Heim said. "He tried to get to my right rear there which would have probably won the race and I had to protect it."
For most of the afternoon, neither of them was the story. Carson Hocevar was. The Cup regular, running the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet on his home Michigan soil, led 65 of the 126 laps — more than half the race — and looked like he was going to win it for the hometown crowd. Then Heim got to him with fifteen to go. Those were the only laps Heim led all day, and they were the only ones he needed.
Hocevar's truck had been overheating the whole time, and he knew it cost him. He was driving for the home crowd and for his mother, who's celebrating a birthday this weekend, and he finished third.
"Just sucks we didn't close it out there," Hocevar said. "Felt like I could have done a better job but don't know what I could have done differently. Would like to see what I would have had full power. A lot of reasons to win here at Michigan."
Honeycutt, 21 years old, had reasons of his own. A second career win was right there — it would have matched his breakthrough at Watkins Glen in May — and he pushed his teammate into position to take it from him before coming up a fender short. He didn't sound consoled by second.
"It was unfortunate I didn't get the win there," he said. "Just feel like I've lost too many of them on my part so I think that's what bothers me the most."
For Heim, it's win number 26, and the first one ever at Michigan — a track that had been a blank space on a résumé that doesn't have many. He's now won at 22 different venues, second on the all-time Truck Series list behind only Hall of Famer Ron Hornaday Jr. and his 31. Three wins in five starts this season. And he banked this one a week after announcing he's headed to the championship-leading 23XI Racing organization in the Cup Series for 2027.
The man who walked out of Michigan happiest after the winner might have been Layne Riggs, who didn't win and didn't need to. Riggs went a lap down early after a pit-road problem, dug all the way back to fourth, and kept the championship lead he carried in — now 26 points clear of Honeycutt. He's won each of the last two races. On the day he had nothing, he salvaged fourth. That's what points leaders do. Front Row Motorsports teammate Chandler Smith was right behind him in fifth.
Christopher Bell, the Cup driver moonlighting in the No. 62 Halmar Friesen Toyota, did the most work for the least reward — he swept both stages and led 37 laps before settling for sixth, one of six different leaders on an afternoon that changed hands twenty times.
And then there was the Grand Marshal, who also raced. Cleetus McFarland — more than 4.75 million YouTube followers, owner of his own speedway in Florida — gave the command to fire engines and then climbed into the No. 4 Niece Motorsports Chevrolet for his second start of the season. He spun late, brought out one of seven cautions, and still came home 25th on the lead lap. Two jobs, one afternoon, no complaints.
That's the end of six straight Truck weekends, a grind that started May 1. The series is dark now until June 19, when it does something it has never done — race on a Navy base, the inaugural Truck event at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego, 7 p.m. ET on FS1.
Two weeks to sit with it. Two TRICON trucks, nose to tail at the line, one of them having pushed the other to a win it then tried to steal. For a race team, that's a good problem to have. For the kid who finished second, it's a long way to San Diego.