The Truck Series championship is as it always was following the triultimate race of the season at Talladega Superspeedway.
Neither Kaden Honeycutt nor Layne Riggs won but raced around each other all race, scoring nearly identical stage points, and the deficit is 43 with just Martinsville and Homestead-Miami left.
Technically, Ty Majeski, Chandler Smith and Christian Eckes are mathematically eligible but these scenarios require the two most dominant teams of the 2026 season to score the bare minimum points and one of those three to sweep stages and win races the next two weeks.
Everyone knows the score. It’s the Tricon 11 versus the Front Row 34.
Riggs had a chance to win on Friday, and it even came with forcing Honeycutt to push him out to the lead, but it didn’t work out for either driver. The final restart scenario gave Honeycutt a great deal of anxiety, however.
When asked, he covered his face, and said that's what he wanted to do coming to the green. What does he do?
"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."
Ultimately, Honeycutt finished fifth and Riggs eighth, so now Riggs more than likely needs to win these next two races at a minimum to claim the championship.
“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 isn’t counting points.
“I've seen people make up 90 in two races, so nothing is safe for sure,” Honeycutt said.
And Riggs is both a short tracker that has spent a decade racing at Martinsville and is confident for 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 (and) 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.”
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