It was a tough afternoon for just about every NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series competitor on Friday afternoon at Naval Base Coronado, including polesitter Kaden Honeycutt, who got into the wall during his qualifying run.
“Unfortunately, the right rear is a little messed up,” Honeycutt explained after his run. “But I think we’ll be able to fix it as long as we fix that seam in the ‘S’ in Safelite, it’ll be alright. Just an unfortunate mistake on my part right there at the end of the lap.”
However, the contact with the wall was unable to slow down the driver of the No. 11 TRICON Garage Toyota Tundra TRD PRO, and Honeycutt rolled to an historic pole position in the first-ever NASCAR street race qualifying session at the Naval base in San Diego, CA.
Starting Lineup: Navy 250 at San Diego
The pole marks the third of Honeycutt’s 2026 campaign, and third of his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series career, and it comes in his 71st career start.
Honeycutt was credited with a lap time of 2 minutes, 14.782 seconds around the 3.4-mile street course circuit, which equated to an average speed of 90.813 mph. This allowed the driver to top Layne Riggs by an impressive margin of 0.414 seconds.
Had the TRICON Garage driver realized how far ahead of the competition he was, he would have likely avoided stepping over the line into the wall during his run.
“Looking at the board now, I really wish I didn’t attack it that hard,” Honeycutt said. “But the racer in me just goes and gets everything I can out of the truck.”
Chandler Smith will start from the third position, and he’ll be joined in Row 2 by Jimmie Johnson, a seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion.
Grant Enfinger was the fifth-fastest qualifier in the session.
In all, six drivers were unable to put in a qualifying time on Friday due to a slew of crashes in practice and qualifying.
Christian Eckes, Justin Marks, Daniel Hemric, Adam Andretti, Brenden Queen, and Tanner Gray were among the drivers unable to turn a qualifying lap.
