NASCAR Cup Series
Cup Series Teams Seeking Sustainable Economic Model from NASCAR
Oct 7, 2022
What a massive victory for Kaden Honeycutt on Friday night in CARS Tour competition at Ace Speedway.
Just short of two weeks after the passing of his grandfather, Honeycutt ended a lengthy winless streak for both himself and Nelson Motorsports and did it in dominant fashion by leading almost every lap and holding the spot through lapped traffic as well.
There were tears, laughter and everything familial about his racing experience -- blood and otherwise as the entire group joined in prayer before a second spraying of champagne.
Again, just a special win.
"With the passing of my grandfather a couple of weeks ago, this is just so special," Honeycutt said. "Especially my family and this team, they've just worked their butts off all season and we haven't had the luck we needed to finish out these races.
"Finally, we had things play out our way, it stayed green and I kept the gap to Chad (McCumbee) and save my brakes in case anything happened."
What Honeycutt didn’t even realize was that McCumbee had actually fallen out of the race with a brake o-line failure and had a massive lead over Josh Berry -- filling in for the suspended Carson Kvapil in the JR Motorsports No. 8.
Honeycutt and McCumbee had just completed a thrilling duel in lap traffic.
"It was very intense," Honeycutt said. "We had one spin right in front of us and that was kind of scary. When I darted between (Brandon Pierce) and (Dylan Ward) racing hard, I was fortunate that (Pierce) gave me room in the middle. (McCumbee) got pinched at that helped."
Berry finished second but was not able to stick around for post-race festivities needing to drive back to the greater Charlotte area for Saturday’s NASCAR Xfinity Series race on the ROVAL. Berry has a chance to advance to the Round of 8 should he stay above the cutline by the end of that race.
With Kvapil suspended for Saturday, a result of a retaliatory action last month at Tri County Motor Speedway, Honeycutt gained all but one point of the maximum available at Ace. He cut the lead down from 72 to 37 -- still longshot odds.
Honeycutt was just proud to have broken his own Late Model winless spell and Nelson Motorsports’ – both the longest in the modern history of the organization.
"We’re second in points and it doesn’t feel like it because we hadn’t won," Honeycutt said. "So it’s not been a lack of effort or performance, just some bad breaks and things that didn’t go our way that finally did tonight so I’m just happy to get these guys to Victory Lane because they deserve it."
CARS Tour
Ace Speedway
October 7 2022
- Kaden Honeycutt
- Josh Berry
- Connor Hall
- Ryan Millington
- Jacob Heafner
- Conner Jones
- Jonathan Shafer
- Jared Fryar
- Chase Burrow
- Carter Langley
- Ashton Higgins
- Mini Tyrell
- Mason Diaz
- Heath Causey
- Chad McCumbee
- Dylan Ward
- Braden Rogers
- Mike Darne
- Hayden Swank
- Janson Marchbanks
- Bobby McCarty
- Zack Miracle
- Brandon Pierce
- Trevor Ward
- Blake Stallings
