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Sammy Smith, Dawson Sutton To Drive For TRICON Garage Full-Time In 2027

by racerx55 October 23, 2026 0 comments

Story By Patricia McCormack/TheFourthTurn.com

TALLADEGA, Ala. – TRICON Garage announced on Friday at Talladega Superspeedway that they will be expanding to a team of four full-time trucks with a fifth truck being utilized as a part-time ride, featuring a revolving cast of drivers in 2027.

With the announcement of Rackley WAR closing down their truck program after the 2026 season, Dawson Sutton, who has driven for his family’s team for most of his career, will drive the No. 5 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro for TRICON Garage in the NASCAR FedEx Freight Truck Series tarting in February at Daytona International Speedway. Sutton is currently in his second full-time season in the series. His best finish this year was a seventh at Bristol back in April.

“I feel like it’s honestly just the place to be,” Sutton said. “It’s going be a big change for me. Having four teammates, but at the same time, I race late models and I had teammates, so I think it’ll be really cool to lean on them a lot and also just use my prior success in the grassroots stuff, and also the past few years, I’ve learned a lot and I’m just super excited for the future.”

Sammy Smith will make his first full-time attempt in the series in the No.15 Toyota. Smith will finish out the 2026 season driving the JR Motorsports No. 8 Chevrolet in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. Smith will be taking over for Tanner Gray who’s future plans are TBD. On Friday, he visited Victory Lane for the first time in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series will racing for Spire Motorsports.

RECAP: Sammy Smith Wins His First NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Race At Talladega

“It’s always enjoyable to race on a weekend where I’m running O’Reilly Series just to get more experience and obviously, I love to race,” Smith said. “I feel like going to next year will kind of be a rookie learning year of learning the trucks, but I know I have a lot of great resources around me to be able to go capitalize on that and try to go win races.”

Currently, TRICON Garage has three full-time drivers and two part-time trucks, Kaden Honeycutt and Gio Ruggerio announced earlier this week that they will be returning to their trucks in 2027. Honeycutt is currently the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series points leader with a 43-point gap over Layne Riggs.

“Watching Kaden over the course of this year, I think everyone has been excited, especially inside our program, to see the progression that he has made,” said TRICON Garage Partner and General Manager, Kevin Ray. “Not only on the racetrack, but as a person. Our philosophy inside TRICON is we can all build the same parts and pieces. It’s about the people that we surround ourselves with. I think that Kaden has done a very good job coming into the program and leaning on that experience. We expect him to continue to contend for the championship this year, and our, our intent is for all four of our guys, full-time guys, to be going for the championship at Homestead next year.”

The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series will visit Martinsville Speedway for the Black’s Tire 200 Presented by DownEast on Friday, Oct. 30. Live coverage of the next to the last race of the season will broadcast on FS1 at 6 p.m. ET.