Duel, a chase, a coronation: NASCAR Championship Weekend races at Homestead

David J. Neal, Miami Herald on Nov 5, 2026

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MIAMI — You want a short attention span, social media-era summary of NASCAR Championship Weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway? Fine.

Two young men racing for what would be either’s first title; four young guys chasing one old (OK, middle-aged) champion; and one man adding to his championship total and his Best Driver of The Era resume.

Those are chronological order capsules of Friday’s Craftsman Truck Series championship race, Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Series championship, and Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship at Homestead, where everybody seems happy to have returned for the season climax.

“Looking forward to the opportunity to try to win the championship at a track we never should’ve left [for the championship weekend],” said Kaden Honeycutt, leader in the Craftsman Truck Series points.

Honeycutt was 16 when Homestead’s 2002-2019 run as home of NASCAR’s championship weekend ended.

Duel, but with two trucks instead of one

— The race: NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship Race, 134 laps covering 201 miles.

— Green flag: Friday, 7:30 p.m.

— The situation: Honeycutt leads Layne Riggs by 20 points. Honeycutt wins the title if he scores 55 points, which is what a driver gets with a win. Riggs can win the title with 75 points.

Honeycutt, 23, waved off any on track incidents between he and the 24-year-old Riggs as occurring “when we were kids.” He wanted to win the title outracing Riggs in the proper manner for team morale and boosting his chances of getting an O’Reilly series ride.

“We don’t want to win the championship and make it look terrible,” Honeycutt said. “That would put us a couple of years behind in that aspect.”

Four men trying to beat The Man

— The race: NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series championship, 200 laps covering 300 miles.

— Green flag: Saturday, 5 p.m.

— The situation: Justin Allgaier leads Jesse Love by 22 points; Corey Day by 23; Carson Kvapil by 31; and Sheldon Creed by 42.

Allgaier won the 2024 series title, was third last year and is the active leader in wins, 34, sixth all-time He’s 40 and pondered retirement at the start of the season, but he just signed a multiyear deal with JR Motorsports (that “JR” is “Jr.” as in Hall of Fame driver and ace interviewer and podcaster, Dale Earnhardt Jr.)

“The competitive side of me always wants to win, always wants to be better, always wants to win races and championships,” Allgaier said. “My reason why is very different than it was five years ago or two years ago when we won the championship. I think that’s a good thing. As you get older and you mature, you realize why things are important to you sometimes and why they’re not.

“I don’t want to win this one for me,” he continued. “I want to win this for the people around me. There’s so many people who have fed, not only their year, but their hearts, their lives, into creating successful race cars and teams. I’d be crazy to not try to get it for those guys.”

One man not lonely at the top

— The race: NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race 267 laps covering 400.5 miles.

— Green flag: Sunday, 3 p.m.

— The situation: Kyle Larson holds a gargantuan 67-point lead on Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin. Larson needs to finish 28th or get nine points in any way to clinch his third title in six seasons.

NASCAR gathered all the contenders in the trucks and O’Reilly series for Thursday’s media day. So fat is Larson’s lead, NASCAR brought him in alone.

“It’s an awkward sort of media day for me,” Larson said, chuckling about sitting by himself at the front of the media center. “But, we’ve earned the right for it to be awkward.”

Larson could drive like a boxer who knows he can only lose by knockout, avoiding anything that looks like a dangerous situation. Champions have raced that way at Homestead before. Or, he could win the title in the first stage.

Nobody’s better at riding the Homestead wall than Larson. He doesn’t see it as risky because “that’s where the most grip is.” He even did it on his way to winning the March 2025 truck series race at Homestead, and Riggs said the margin of error in doing that in trucks is much smaller than when running Cup or O’Reilly cars.

“The cars are tougher than they used to be,” Larson said. “There’s still risk, but a lot less. I foresee my race looking like any other Homestead race to me — try to get to the front and, hopefully, the first stage goes well. Then, you can really just race free after that.”