Truck Series star Kaden Honeycutt led all but 13 laps during the iconic 200 laps at South Boston. This was his third straight Late Model Stock win at South Boston dating back to the CARS Tour race and Orange Crush 250 in the Fall.
“Everywhere we’ve gone, we’ve been so consistent.” Honeycutt said. “And I just think for our package here with our last car and this car we just try not to venture out too much [with executing]. And I think that’s what we do so good at, sticking to basics and not trying to overthink things, having a plan, and trying to execute that plan.”
“Oddly enough, this was a harder race than San Diego was…” Honeycutt said. “[You] got to stay locked into it [South Boston] as much as possible. It’s just so hot, so humid. And I only had literally just a driver fan, and two or three laps into it you hardly even feel it because how hot it is. But yeah, everyone did a great job. I can’t take my crew enough.”
His domination over the 43-car field of South Boston locals, Virginia Triple Crown hopefuls, and CARS Tour regulars will not continue into the Hampton Heat and Martinsville, as this was his only 2026 Triple Crown start.
First Half Thunder
A stack up towards the back of the field on lap one set off the first red flag of the night.
It set the tone for the first half of the feature, and involved Mini Tyrrell, Conner Jones, Landon Huffman, Ryley Music, Carson Loftin, and Tyler Matthews.
The second red flag incident occurred on lap 42 when Landon Pembleton got into Peyton Sellers’ left rear. Sellers spun up turn one and hit Andrew Grady, then came down into Lee Pulliam.
After the incident, Grady expressed his displeasure on Flo.
Pulliam will be running the other two Triple Crowns for JR Motorsports.
South Boston Stars on the podium
The CARS Tour drivers started in the front, and the track talent started further back, so both of them had to run through the field to finish in the top-three.
“We just weren’t that good at the first half, and came and rebounded.” Pembleton said. “And thankfully, it was good, and just if we could have been about ninth or 10th, instead of 14th, I think it would have played into our hands a lot better. But glad we got a lot of momentum for Langley.”
Trevor Ward and Pembleton rounded out the top-three. The two South Boston regulars were hoping to catch luck with a yellow flag, but the second half of the race ran green.
This marks Ward’s second time as the runner-up finisher in the iconic event.
“It was definitely one to remember…” Ward said. “It’s very bittersweet, but, like I said, it’s the testimony at the same time for what this team’s about, and how competitive we can be in these crown jewel races.”“The track changes so dramatically from having an average of 18 cars to 16 cars [regularly] to 46 to 43 cars [today] or whatever it was this weekend.” Ward said. “So the track wasn’t nothing like what we run on a weekly basis, and we were all searching just like anybody else. So we got to have a good race car at the end of the day, and we was the second best race car, obviously. I felt like we were the best at the end, we just had right out of time.”
“I just don’t think we were good enough [in qualifying].” Pembleton said. “Like, I think I was okay, but if you look at it, it was one tenth from 1st to 15th. That’s insane. So, and then two tenths, to like 30th. So it’s the name of the game. You got to qualify good.”
CARS Tour championship preparations
South Boston also hosts the CARS Tour championship race, so the Triple Crown event is an important opportunity to prepare.
“You can come test all you want, but coming to race is something totally different.” Landon Lewis said. When you get 47 cars on a racetrack versus two or three, your tracks change a lot. So we got notes, we’ll take those.”
“It’s really good for me.” Caden Kvapil said. “It’s my first Late Model Stock race here, and it’s the speed that we did. It’s really given me a lot of confidence going to that race. Like you said, hopefully by that time we maybe have the championship locked up if everything keeps going good like it is now. But if not, we’ll have good notes and obviously JRM as a whole, they run really well here, and for my first time coming here, having Lee [Pulliam] as a teammate, it was really good for me to be able to bounce ideas off him and learn what I could.”
Up Next
The remaining Virginia Triple Crown races are the Hampton Heat on July 25 and the Crown Jewel event of Late Model Stock Car racing, the Martinsville 300 on September 26.
