Copyright sportskeeda
Kaden Honeycutt is optimistic about his chances against Corey Heim in Tricon Garage's No. 11 Toyota in the battle for the NASCAR Truck Series title this week at Phoenix.The 22-year-old Texas native and his Halmar Friesen Racing (HFR) crew will head to the 2025 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship Race after a dramatic finish last week. Honeycutt edged out Layne Riggs on a tiebreaker thanks to a strong runner-up finish at Martinsville Speedway and got the final berth.But Heim has set the bar high. He leads the points, has 11 wins, seven poles, and 18 top-5s this season. Honeycutt sits right behind him in the standings with zero but 13 top-10s and three top-5s.Ahead of the 50-minute practice session at Phoenix Raceway on Thursday (October 30), Fox Sports' Bob Pockrass asked Honeycutt whether they could challenge Heim with enough speed."Yeah. I feel like this HFR crew has done extremely a lot of work to match the 11 speed, if not try to exceed it. We've been trying to exceed it for the last seven weeks, and we haven't done it yet, but we've been extremely close," Kaden Honeycutt said."So I feel like for Phoenix, of how hard these guys have been working, we're bringing our best truck that we have raced the last eight races with, and we'll just see if we can go up and challenge him and the other three as well. I think it'll be a really good race between all of us," he added.Kaden Honeycutt will have to face Heim, Tyler Ankrum, and defending series champion Ty Majeski in the championship round on the 1-mile oval in Avondale, Arizona. He has three top-10 finishes in his three career starts at Phoenix, and last season, he ended the championship race in 7th place.Meanwhile, Heim was placed in second after he could not match Majeski's speed and suffered an "out of character" penalty. He also told Bob Pockrass how he could close the gap on the speed this time around, saying:"I've definitely, significantly gotten better on those style racetracks, so I think me personally, team aside, truck aside, I think I've gotten better. I think that's going to make up for some of my lack of speed last year."Kaden Honeycutt, on the other hand, is only focused on winning the race, as he told Pockrass."I just want to win this race" - Kaden Honeycutt after joining new team mid-seasonKaden Honeycutt started this season in the No. 45 truck for Niece Motorsports. But the team released him after he signed a deal with a different manufacturer for 2026. He also made a one-off appearance with Young's Motorsports to stay eligible for the playoffs and then joined Halmar Friesen Racing in mid-August as the substitute driver for the rest of the season.During the same interview with Bob Pockrass, he said he feels like part of the family at HFR and wants to win the finale race."I just want to win this race, the championship more so than myself, because they definitely deserve it, especially the circumstance that we've been dealt with this year," Kaden Honeycutt said.The 150-lap Truck Series final race of the season will start at 7:30 pm ET on Friday after the qualifying at 3:35 pm ET.
