Layne Riggs can still win the 2026 NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series title.
Now, he was never actually out of contention for the end-of-season crown, per se, but the driver of the No. 34 Bare Knuckle Boxing Ford F-150 was going to have a difficult path to catch Kaden Honeycutt – driving for last year’s championship-winning team.
The Bahama, North Carolina-native entered the evening with a 43-point deficit to Honeycutt, but, after a third-place finish in Friday’s Black’s Tire 200 at Martinsville, finds himself with 20 points of the championship lead.
That is because on a restart with 13 laps to go, Honeycutt was on the outside of a three-wide situation and didn’t know it, leading to contact with 16-year-old Spire Motorsports rookie Tristan McKee that sent him up the track and back to 14th.
One bobble. At least 10 points.
While it doesn’t seem like it at all, Honeycutt got very lucky, because at that exact same time, Chandler Smith, Riggs’ teammate at Front Row Motorsports, made a power move around the outside to get the lead, and eventually the victory, while dropkicking his championship-contending teammate to third.
Had Riggs, who led a race-high 156 of 200 laps, went on to win the race, he’d be holding the championship lead by a single point heading into the season-finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
It’s not over by any means, though. A twenty-point margin seems large, but new this year, the difference between winning a NASCAR National Series event and finishing runner-up is 20 points, meaning a win for Riggs could lock up the title for the No. 34.
“All positivity, we’re going to go win it,” Riggs said post-race when asked about his title prospects at Homestead. “With this format having 20 bonus points, it’s pretty much a winner take all again, in my opinion. Instead of having four, it’s two this time, so we’re going to 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. We’ve just got to go there and execute. As you saw tonight, he’s not as dominant as some people think. He had a little issue that kind of helped us out as well, but it would have been nice to win for me. We would have been in the plus, right now.”
Heading to Homestead, it’s simple.
If Kaden Honeycutt wins, he’s the champion. Otherwise, Layne Riggs has a chance.
Should Riggs go to Victory Lane, they match each other on stage points, and Honeycutt finishes second, they’d tie, with the tiebreaker going to the No. 34, who has seven wins on the season versus Honeycutt’s four.
However, we won’t really know what has to happen until the final stage, because every stage point advantage that one driver has over another will determine what needs to happen in order to crown the 2026 NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series Championship in either direction.
The question is, who will it be? Kaden Honeycutt or Layne Riggs.
Photo: Grant Baker, NKP, Courtesy of Ford Racing
