Honeycutt Leads 225 Laps, Crushes Richmond Truck Field

Kaden Honeycutt celebrates with a burnout after winning Saturday at Richmond Raceway. (Nickolas Wolf/Nigel Kinrade Photography)

By Thomas Hughes, SWN Staff Writer

RICHMOND, Va. (Aug. 15, 2026) — Sometimes, dominance is obvious from the outset. Other times, it takes until the 11th hour to rear its head.

At the Black’s Tire 250 at Richmond Raceway Saturday afternoon, there was little ambiguity, as TRICON Garage’s Kaden Honeycutt led 121 of the first 123 laps and 225 overall en route to his second victory of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season.

Honeycutt bested teammate and reigning Truck Series champion Corey Heim, who is running a part-time schedule across all three NASCAR national divisions this year, by 1.313 seconds.

Honeycutt became the first driver since Timothy Peters in 2012 to lead more than 200 laps in a Truck Series race, claiming his second victory of the season and first career series win on an oval.

“I thought we were going to stay out, but we ended up pitting and just needed a good restart on Grant [Enfinger],” Honeycutt said. “I knew I was better than him, just needed to get out in front of him to solidify it, and that is what we did. Thanks to Scott (Zipadelli, Honeycutt's crew chief]; everyone did a great job today. Really awesome to win.”

Honeycutt won the first Truck race of his career in May at Watkins Glen — and Saturday marked his first oval win at the national series level after nine prior true oval podiums.

With the victory, a sweep of the stages, and the Xfinity Fastest Lap, Honeycutt gained 39 points on Front Row Motorsports’ Layne Riggs – the series point leader who finished 15th after getting stymied by a caution that interrupted the final green-flag pit cycle.

With one race to go before the Chase reset, Honeycutt (692 points) is 61 points behind Layne Riggs (753) for the top spot in the standings.

Spire Motorsports’ Shane van Gisbergen started on pole, but he couldn’t hold off the hard-charging Honeycutt, who took the lead within the first couple laps.

Van Gisbergen’s gap behind the TRICON Garage No. 11 Toyota lengthened to over a second and a half, and though he worked the deficit back by changing his line higher up the racetrack, he was unable to restrain Honeycutt from leading the entirety of the first stage.

Honeycutt went one lap down briefly in the final stage after his last pit stop, but he was undeterred. Once the team was able to regain its lap, it was business as usual for Honeycutt and the rest of the No. 11 team.

“Once we had [the lead lap] back, I was pretty OK if there was a caution,” Honeycutt said. “My situation definitely got better after that. I don’t know if the caution would have not come out, where we would have cycled out. But I think we would have been the leader. Either way, it worked out.”

During each restart, Honeycutt opted for the bottom lane when going back to green, maintaining the lead each time. That came as a surprise, given that Honeycutt cited restarts as one of his weaknesses.

“On that start, I don’t know if Grant spun them really hard, but I felt like my start wasn’t as good as I was on the bottom, being in second,” Honeycutt said. “But my goal was to at least stay even with him through [turns] one and two. I felt like I could fend him off and really cut his entry off, not put him out in the apron or anything. Just made a good move there; [had a] good restart.”

What looked as though it might be a green-flag final stage to the finish got turned on its head with 35 laps left, when Stewart Friesen suffered a hard crash in the midst of the final pit cycle. At that point, Grant Enfinger and van Gisbergen had stayed out long trying to stretch their fuel to the finish.

It left only eight trucks on the lead lap at the time and paved the way for Honeycutt to come down, get fresh tires, and ultimately drive back past Enfinger on the final restart coming to 28 to go.

Heim got to second, but didn’t have enough to chase down Honeycutt despite the lead pair working in and out of traffic during the final laps.

Behind Honeycutt and Heim, McAnally-Hilgemann Racing’s Christian Eckes finished third, with van Gisbergen and Enfinger rounding out the top five.

Enfinger’s opting for an economy run after lap 200 came as he bet on Honeycutt’s tires wearing off had the race remained green to the finish through the final stage. It was an endeavor that did not work, though Enfinger led 22 of the race’s 250 laps.

Finishing Sixth through 10th were Jake Garcia, Chandler Smith, 16-year-old debutant Tristan McKee, Gio Ruggiero and Daniel Hemric.

Elsewhere in the field, ThorSport’s Ty Majeski ran 19th after contact with Heim that cut a tire and forced an early unscheduled pit stop, but he still locked up his spot in the 10-man Chase field.

Meanwhile, Ankrum, who entered the Richmond race with an eight-point deficit to Halmar Friesen Racing’s Stewart Friesen for the Chase, made up 28 points. That was partially due to Ankrum’s 11th-place finish, but mostly due to Friesen retiring from his earlier crash on lap 216.

At the time of Friesen’s crash, he was running in 18th place and stood one point above the cut line.

Friesen is now 20 points behind Ankrum for the final spot in the Chase. ThorSport’s Jake Garcia is in a 21-point hole in 12th place, while Kaulig Racing’s Brenden Queen is 13th with a 47-point deficit to Ankrum.

“It's been subpar, to say the least,” Ankrum said of his 2026 season. “We haven't gotten enough stage points. We haven't won. We haven't gotten enough top-fives, top-10s. It's been a very dismal year compared to last year, which none of us are proud of. So, I'm happy for our performance today. It was more reminiscent of what we had going on last year, and we need to keep on bringing that speed.”

There’s one race to go until the NASCAR Truck Series enters its 10-race, 10-driver Chase for the Championship, the Team EJP 175 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Saturday, Aug. 22.

Broadcast coverage airs starting at 1:30 p.m. ET on FS1, the NASCAR Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.