Kaden Honeycutt swept Stage 1 of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Kansas Speedway on Saturday, but a fast-moving storm system threatens to decide who ends up winning.
NASCAR’s own rulebook hands the win to whoever is leading when Stage 2 wraps up, which means Honeycutt’s stage victory is no guarantee of a final result. Honeycutt also won the second stage when a caution cut the stage short.
Nick Sanchez started from the pole for Saturday’s rain-delayed Kansas race, after rain wiped out Friday’s practice and qualifying sessions entirely. Jake Garcia, fresh off a win last week at Bristol, lined up second. The 134-lap, 201-mile race marks the Craftsman Truck Series’ second of seven Chase playoff races this postseason.
Honeycutt led every lap of Stage 1, according to NASCAR reporter Bob Pockrass. Gio Ruggiero and Layne Riggs followed him across the stage line, with Riggs climbing all the way from a 22nd-place starting spot into the top three for stage points. Sanchez, Ty Majeski, Christian Eckes and Daniel Hemric rounded out the rest of the stage’s top seven, a group that suggests the front of the field held up even as the sky darkened over the 36-truck entry list.
Kaden Honeycutt’s Kansas Lead Runs Into a Rain Problem
Trucks went back to green in Stage 2 with 24 laps left in that Stage 2 segment that ends at lap 60, Pockrass reported shortly before 1 p.m. CDT. He had already flagged rain arriving within 20 to 30 minutes of that restart, a window that matched what was falling around Kansas City at the time.
The metro sat at 72 degrees with a 70% chance of light rain as of just before 1 p.m., according to WeatherBug, with 0.11 inches already on the ground for the day and southeasterly winds running 5 to 10 mph. The National Weather Service’s morning outlook called for a chance of storms through Saturday afternoon, with highs in the upper 70s and roughly even odds of more rain overnight. That kind of lingering system, rather than a single fast-moving cell, is why NASCAR is watching the radar as closely as the leaderboard Saturday.
What Rain Would Mean for Kansas Truck Race Winner
NASCAR only certifies a race as official once it reaches halfway or the end of Stage 2, whichever comes first, and the leader at that moment becomes the winner if rain wipes out the rest of the day. Stage 2 at Kansas ends at lap 60, seven laps ahead of the true halfway point, so the stage break is what actually decides the threshold Saturday.
Pockrass laid out how close that threshold really is. A caution after lap 50 would still complete Stage 2, and if rain followed that caution, the race would already be official. He described it as a real possibility for Saturday — a short run to the stage line, a caution, then rain shutting things down, all within a matter of laps.
NASCAR has leaned on that same rule before. Officials set an adverse-conditions cutoff earlier this year at Atlanta, according to Frontstretch.
Whoever is out front when that stage line hits inherits the trophy, and that is not guaranteed to be Honeycutt. Stage 2 pit strategy can reshuffle the running order before lap 60, and no one had publicly named a new leader once the trucks went back green. The stage that made Honeycutt look untouchable might not be the one that decides who actually wins at Kansas.
With 12 laps to go now in Stage 2, Layne Riggs took the lead, but Honeycutt quickly forced his way back to the front with 50 laps complete.
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