Landen Lewis, Kaden Honeycutt Score CARS Tour Wins at Caraway

Rain postponed the zMAX CARS Tour TCPS Plumbing 250 from Saturday evening to Sunday afternoon at Caraway Speedway. The race was worth the wait for Landen Lewis and Kaden Honeycutt, who picked up wins in the rescheduled program.

Lewis had a comeback for the ages in the Late Model Stock feature. After committing a commitment zone violation preparing for a restart, Lewis went to the rear of the field from the lead. The North Carolina driver worked his way back through the field, scoring the win by more than two seconds in the 125-lap feature.

"First off, I want to thank all my guys for giving me a car where I can go and do that," said Lewis. "I want to apologize, for making a mistake that I'm far from making, I shouldn't make those mistakes where we're at in racing. I guess I'll never hit the orange cone again.

"I'm sure [car owner] Kevin [Harvick]'s pretty pumped about that one. He would have been proud of me there. Discipline is what it took to get back to the front. Just pick them off one at a time, make up for their mistakes, just try to capitalize on them."

While Lewis maneuvered his way through the field for the victory, he was much more eager to tip his cap to his Kevin Harvick, Inc. team for giving him a car capable of getting back to the front.

"I give this one to my team at the end of the day. They're the ones that work their butts off every day, and I'm there with them. At the end of the day, without them, I wouldn't be here. I think this is a group effort, but it's probably one of my favorite wins I've ever, ever raced. To come from the back, back to the front, just taught us all the discipline and not to give up. It just never ended, and keep fighting."

Conner Jones finished second to Lewis, running well while Lewis drove through the field. It may have been too well, as Jones estimates he used too much of the life in his tires to fend off the hard-charging Lewis.

"I feel like we led the most laps," said Jones. "It's tough to go out like that. It was hard racing the whole time. I feel like I probably used and abused my rear tires a little too much there towards the end and just gave them the advantage on the restart."

Caden Kvapil drove from the 11th starting position to third as he continues his bid for a CARS Tour Late Model Stock championship. He struggled to adjust to the handling of his car with the Sunday afternoon race, but persevered for a podium finish.

"It was definitely pretty hectic," said Kvapil. "We didn't have the best car, by no means. We started 11th, but I thought it was going to be fine. I thought we had a really good race-run car in practice, and qualified a little better than we were expecting, honestly.

"I guess, just being in the daytime, rather than night, we were too free everywhere from the start. I thought we were going to be way too loose by the end of it and not really have a good finish. We did really good on restarts and were able to get a lot of spots, made moves when I needed to and put ourselves in a decent position at the end."

Honeycutt took the lead just before halfway in the 100-lap Pro Late Model feature, and maintained the top spot through a spree of late cautions that slowed the pace of the Sunday afternoon contest.

Those yellow flags put pressure on Honeycutt to execute on restarts, but he held strong and stayed at the point while the field battled behind him.

"I just hate that we had yellows there," said Honeycutt. "I just needed to take control on the restart. It's really difficult here to choose the bottom or the top. I feel like, as the leader, you can go either way. I just wanted to make the right decision there, and thankfully, we did.

"I love the Late Model stuff, man. The Pro Late Model stuff and the CARS Tour is as hard as it gets right now. A lot of the CARS Tour guys went to the Derby last year for the Flake, and we put on a really good race and we were all up front. This series is no joke. Across the Pro Late Model scale and the Late Model Stock scale, it's really awesome to be able to win with this series."

Rodney Dowless, Jr. escaped the fray with a runner-up finish, his first with the CARS Pro Late Model Tour. The New York driver finished 13th in the season opener at Southern National Motorsports Park and 17th at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway.

"I was extremely happy, very happy," said Dowless. "First podium of the year, and the first with the CARS Tour, so I'm ecstatic.

"I think Kaden Honeycutt did a really good job. I don't think I could have gotten him. He had a pretty big lead. I just tried to stay consistent, stay clean and stay out of it."

A four-time Late Model Stock Car winner with the CARS Tour, including a victory this year at Wake County Speedway, Conner Jones is still searching his first Pro Late Model win with the series. He finished third after a hard-fought battle with Brody Monahan on Sunday at Caraway.

"It was fun. He got me back from what I did to him earlier in the race. I crossed him back over, and I was able to pull away a little bit. We've struggled with this car all weekend, so hats off to my guys on coming down [pit road] early in the race, making an adjustment and getting this thing where I can at least drive it."

The next stop for the zMAX CARS Tour is Ace Speedway on May 9, with both the Late Model Stock Cars and Pro Late Models set to do battle.

-Photo credit: CARS Tour

zMAX CARS Tour TCPS Plumbing 250 Unofficial Results

Late Model Stock Cars

Pro Late Models