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Kaden Honeycutt Sweeps Watkins Glen International And Wins At Ace Speedway

by racerx55 May 10, 2026 0 comments

Story & Photo By Trish McCormack/TheFourthTurn.com

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. – Kaden Honeycutt held off Connor Zilisch in the Bully Hill Vineyards 176 at Watkins Glen International to score his first NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series victory, hours after winning his first ARCA Menards Series race. Honeycutt then traveled to North Carolina’s Ace Speedway to sweep both zMAX CARS Tour races.

Honeycutt joins Sam Mayer as the only two drivers to win in both the ARCA Menards Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races on the same day, with Honeycutt being the only one of the two to have both wins being his first in each respective series. Mayer won back to back races at Bristol Motor Speedway in 2020.

What started out as a cold and rainy morning that caused the ARCA Menards Series to cancel qualifying and push back practice, ended up being a sunny yet still chilly afternoon for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Honeycutt passed Zilisch with two laps to go and held on for the victory. The win came in Honeycutt’s 67th start in the series, and he celebrated the feat by “shotgunning” a beer below the flag stand with the fans cheering him on.

“We scrapped and clawed through that last run for sure man,” Honeycutt said. “Just thank you so much to Scott (Zipadelli, crew chief) – this whole 11 team, Safelite, Foster Love, JBL, TRICON, TOYOTA RACING – for giving me everything we needed to be successful. Just a great Tundra today. I knew when I was running second to (Connor) Zilisch, we had something to win with at the end. Last stage started – it is what it is – I had a penalty. Just drove my ass off to get through there and it paid off. Just a great job by these guys. They did such a perfect job for me all weekend. That is all I can ask for.”

While many anticipated a weekend dominated by Trackhouse Racing teammates Shane van Gisbergen and Zilisch, who were competing in all three races at Watkins Glen, no one, including Honeycutt himself, anticipated that he would be able to hold off both to score his first win at the 3.450 mile road course in the Craftsman Truck Series. 

“I’m just unbelievably surprised it’s on a road course first of all,” Honeycutt said. “Having all the Cup guys run (in the Truck Series), they’ve been beating me every weekend. Just to get there and race them and be faster than them, it’s just a feeling that I really thought I never had. I feel like Texas the other week and Rockingham, I just thought, man what do I have to do to find some extra pace to get around these guys to beat them straight up? And I felt like today was a really good day to showcase that and I think it was just a matter of being aggressive and putting myself in a position to win.” 

At the beginning of the 2026 season, Honeycutt took over as driver of the TRICON Garage No. 11 Toyota Tundra, which Corey Heim won 12 races with in 2025, including the NASCAR Craftsman Series Championship. With the entire crew returning and continuing to build fast trucks that brought Heim so much success, Honeycutt continues to have fast race trucks and opportunities to win on a weekly basis.

“They literally take every day, out of their lives, to come build a race truck for me to drive, and that is just something I can never pay them back for, other than winning,” Honeycutt said. “And for how hard they work putting together such beautiful trucks, the least I can do to show my appreciation is winning for them.”

Honeycutt has an average starting position of 7.4 and an average finish position of 9.4 and continues to show consistency and why he is the current points leader in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. 

In the ARCA Menards Series, Honeycutt was instantly the fastest competitor in practice, showing speed with both wet weather tires as well as slick tires. Honeycutt started the ARCA Menards Series race in 15th and led 28 of 41 laps, taking the lead from Carson Brown on Lap 13 and maintaining the top spot for the remainder of the race. 

Honeycutt’s weekend didn’t stop at Watkins Glen International. Just 24 hours after his wins, Honeycutt competed in The zMAX CARS Tour at Ace Speedway, where he won both the Late Model Stock and Pro Late Model races, becoming the first driver to do so in series history. Honeycutt led all 100 laps in the Pro Late Model race in a dominant fashion while leading the final 75 laps of the Late Model Stock 125 lap race. 

In total across all four races, Honeycutt led 205 of 340 laps on two different tracks, in two different states, with different teams marking one historical weekend for Kaden Honeycutt.