As Motorsport.com reports, the NASCAR Truck Series championship has boiled down to a straight fight between Kaden Honeycutt and Layne Riggs following the triultimate race of the season at Talladega Superspeedway. Neither driver actually won the race, but they spent the entire afternoon shadowing each other, collecting nearly identical stage points to leave the deficit at 43 points with just Martinsville and Homestead-Miami remaining.
Technically speaking, Ty Majeski, Chandler Smith, and Christian Eckes are still mathematically eligible. However, those scenarios require the two dominant teams of the 2026 season to score absolute minimum points while one of those three outsiders sweeps the stages and wins the remaining races. Really, everyone knows how this reads: it is the Tricon 11 versus the Front Row 34.
I've seen people make up 90 in two races, so nothing is safe for sure,
Riggs had a clear shot at victory on Friday, even finding himself in a position where he needed Honeycutt to push him out to the lead, but the dynamic simply did not pan out for either machine. The final restart scenario caused Honeycutt a great deal of anxiety, though when asked about it, he covered his face and admitted what his intentions were coming to the green flag.
"Race for the win, man," Honeycutt said. "I wasn't going to impede my own race by not pushing him. And I think my move in 1 and 2, it solely wasn't because I was trying to shuffle him out of line. It was he opened up the middle by a lot. So I thought if he moved up and I moved with him, I would've got shuffled out from the middle and I'd have lost my spots. So yeah, just made a good move there to get back to the middle and have a shot to win. I just made it too early and too egregious, too much short track eagerness inside my body and just wanted to take it to him when I got it and just needed to be patient. I need to get better on this type of racing. But we'll take it. We'll move on to Martinsville now."
When the dust settled, Honeycutt brought his truck home in fifth place while Riggs crossed the line eighth. That leaves Riggs in a position where he realistically needs to win the next two races at a minimum to claw back the points and claim the title.
"Yeah, that's where we're at," Riggs said. "Unless the 11 has a really bad day... If he would've won today, we would've pretty much been done. I feel like I put in my head, if we're 45 or worse back, we probably didn't have a shot. We're at 43 right now, so obviously it's not too much better. We're going to have to bring some bullets to the next two races. And I got full faith that Dylan (Capello), my crew chief and everybody can put their heads together and build a really, really fast truck these next two races."
Honeycutt, for his part, refuses to rely on the current cushion. "I've seen people make up 90 in two races, so nothing is safe for sure," he said. Meanwhile, Riggs is leaning heavily on his background as a short tracker who has spent a decade racing at Martinsville, alongside genuine confidence heading into Homestead.
"Martinsville's great," Riggs said. "We were on the pole last year, had a transmission issue and I still felt like we had a winning truck. So, I'm excited about that what we can do. And then Homestead, we ran really well there last year in the early season as well. So me and Kyle Larson were battling and Corey (Heim) was up front, had really good trucks. So where our program is at these next two tracks, I got full faith we can qualify on both poles, win both stages and win the race. And at this point, unless 11 has a pretty big issue, that's what we're going to have to do. So I'm on kill."
