After being sidelined for the final nine events of 2025, Stewart Friesen is planning to return full-time to the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series in 2026, beginning with the season-opener at Daytona International Speedway.
Friesen told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Channel 90 on Thursday that he’ll be returning to the seat of the No. 52 Halmar Friesen Racing Toyota Tundra TRD Pro for the February 13 event at ‘The World Center of Racing’.
The 42-year-old driver was seriously injured last July while competing in a Super DIRTcar Series event at Autodrome Drummond in Drummondville, Quebec, suffering an open-book pelvis fracture and a fractured right leg.
“It’s going very well,” Friesen said when asked about the recovery process after the incident. “The last month I’ve been making some leaps and bounds; no more crutches, no more canes, I’m walking pretty normal and trying to work out as much as I can, still doing a lot of physical therapy and anticipating a return at Daytona in just over a month.”
A native of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Friesen is a four-time race-winner in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, including a victory last season at Michigan International Speedway that would have locked him into the series’ post-season.
Kaden Honeycutt piloted the No. 52 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro in Friesen’s absence last season and brought the team into the Championship 4.
“I feel great,” Friesen continued. “I’ve done some sim over at [Toyota Racing Development] in Salisbury a few times, had another session yesterday morning that went really well, and I’m really looking forward to getting back into action and getting back to normal and getting rolling here to start the season.”
Interestingly enough, despite everything that has happened over the last eight months or so, with the accident and the recovery, Friesen says that his plans for the upcoming racing season aren’t going to be much different than year’s past — with a substantial amount of dirt racing on top of his NASCAR Truck Series schedule.
The only thing that may slightly limit the extracurriculars, so to speak, that Friesen competes in is the fact that Halmar Friesen Racing will be expanding to field a second full-time entry in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, thus requiring a little bit more of his attention in other areas of the raceteam.
“First and foremost is the Truck [Series] schedule,” said Friesen. “Our Halmar Friesen Racing team has expanded with Toyota into a two full-time truck team. Running the No. 62 full-time is something that we’re excited about, and that’s going to take a little bit more of my time, working with the drivers and sponsors to get that deal going, and that might affect the dirt modified schedule a little bit. We’ve been pretty aggressive the last couple of years, and had 50-to-60 dirt racing on the schedule, in addition to the Truck Series, so we might scale a little bit back.”
In fact, before the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season-opener at Daytona International Speedway, Friesen says he’ll be competing in some Dirt Modified events from Volusia leading up to Speedweeks.
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series will begin its season on February 13 at Daytona International Speedway, but more than likely, you’ll see Friesen on track before that — whether it’s in a Dirt Modified event, or even the organizational test for NASCAR teams at Rockingham at the end of the month.
