Truck Series Playoffs Begin with Familiar Winner, Usual Chaos

The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs opened with yet another victory by championship favorites Corey Heim and the Tricon Garage No. 11 on Saturday at Darlington while other favorites suffered through a variety of attrition along the way.

Chandler Smith entered as the third seed, 16 points above the cutline, but hit the wall racing for the lead in the opening stages. His truck was broken beyond repair and finished 30th and falls to two points below the cutline ahead of Bristol and New Hampshire.

“Honestly, I’m not too worried about it,” Smith said. “I’m not sure where the points are going to rack up after this race, but going back to Bristol, we were really strong there earlier this year. Then New Hampshire as well, so I’m not really worried about the point situation.

“I’m just a little disappointed in myself.  I had a really fast Ford F-150 today and just barely got the wall and then throttled up and got out of it, and then my right-front tire kind of got stuck and got stuck right back in it and suckered me in.  We run steel bodies, so you can’t really run the fence like you can in an Xfinity car or a Cup car without killing your day like that.”

A consequence of that incident was debris from the contact bouncing into the path of Kaden Honeycutt, whom entered this first round already two points below the cutline. It forced him to take the Halmar Friesen No. 52 down pit road, where he lost two laps, made one up the hard way by passing Heim with fresher tires, and ultimately finished 18th on the lad lap.

He made the most of the truck after the setback but you could see the visible disappointment on his face afterwards.

“Yeah, I think two stages and finishing inside the top 5 can certainly change things at Bristol, just having a good day,” Honeycutt said. “We’re just going to focus on winning.”

Remember that Honeycutt spent all but two regular season races driving for Niece Motorsports until an impending move to Tricon Garage next season necessitated a move to a Toyota team. He joined Halmar Frisen when Stewart Friesen was forced to miss the rest of this season due to an injury.

“I think they had a really solid truck with at Bristol in the spring, and I think we actually got better with that this week when we worked on it,” Honeycutt said. “So yeah, I’m looking forward to Bristol.

“They’ve always been good there, so I don’t see how we can’t go out and compete like we just did today. We just didn’t get to show it for all day. We got to do it for 25 laps or something like that whenever the tire blew down.

“I felt like we had a top 3 truck in today and it’s like I said, I know that the day sucks for sure, but you saying 7 below it really kind of eased my nerves a little bit more. I’ve seen people come back from 25 in less than 18, so it’s definitely possible we’re going to focus on ourselves and focus on winning.”

So, because Smith and Honeycutt had days that placed them in a bit of a hole, everyone else racing for a championship either did exactly what they needed to as a result or even gained despite middling results.

Daniel Hemric and Grant Enfinger leave Darlington +33 and +30 after finishing second and third. Beyond the big picture results, they were both pleased to have been in the same ballpark, speed-wise, as Heim, which hasn’t always been the case this season.

They are peaking at what they hope is the right time.

“I felt like whoever got clean air there was going to win and obviously (Heim) started there,” Hemric said. “So really, really proud of our short run speed and we haven’t really had a ton of that lately and we had a lot of capability in our trucks on short runs compared to weeks past.

“It was good to see some old notebooks come back into play and actually equate speed and consistency and balance of the race track, so that was really cool it was fun I had fun today.”

Enfinger actually felt he may have had a tire issue at some point in the closing stages of the second half so the fact that became a non-issue and he recovered to a podium was a relief.

It’s a step closer to a third straight Championship Race appearance and closer to Heim in performance.

“They weren’t in their own zip code this, this week,” Enfinger said. “We were within a tenth of the top two and maybe superior to them on a short run. The 11 was better by a tenth in the long run and they’ve had two or three tenths to second place so they’re executing at a high level but they were not in their own zip code today.”

Ty Majeski rebounded from an early flat tire to finish fourth and also gained on the cutline.

“It happened with about five to go left in the stage, so we obviously came down pit road and did a green flag pit stop and put those tires on,” Majeski said. “We took the wavearound and stayed out on those old tires in stage two.

“A five lap deficit is a big deal here, so I was just trying to get what I could get track position-wise. We had to come back down at the end of stage two and fix some damage, so we lost some more spots. We basically restarted 17th in that last stage and got up to 10th, and then the caution came out and we made up a few spots on the restart. We had a good truck all day, but just nothing to show for it with no track position. I’m proud of the effort today. It could have been disastrous for sure and glad we recovered as a team. The pit stops were great. Good execution today.”

On Lap 148, Layne Riggs was leading the race when he got into the wall in a similar fashion as his Front Row Motorsports teammate, Smith, and ultimately finished 17th and still gained from 23 to 28 above the cutline due to his stage points from running in the top-five until his issue.

“It’s a shared Darlington thing,” Riggs said of the similarity to the Smith incident. “I mean, I think I saw 10-to-15 trucks today have right fronts down just it’s so easy because with these steel bodies and I mean you just, you just skim the wall and it cuts the right front tires.I really didn’t even feel like I got into it too hard and it cut it down, so kind of got a lucky break with that caution coming out and being able to stay out and stay on the lead lap but looking at the stat sheet, it was a dismal day considering the speed that we had.”

Updated Playoff Grid

Corey Heim Adv.
Layne Riggs +38
Daniel Hemric +33
Grant Enfinger +30
Tyler Ankrum +22
Ty Majeski +16
Rajah Caruth +4
Jake Garcia +2
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Chandler Smith -2
Kaden Honeycutt -7