Kaden Honeycutt is having a tremendous season. Racing a bevy of series and cars ranging from the Modifieds of Mayhem, CARS Tour Late Model Stock Cars, and the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, Honeycutt is blazing the hottest of trails in motorsports right now.
On Friday, Honeycutt was again behind the wheel of the No. 54 Pro Late Model of JC Motorsports, a team that he has won with on three prior occasions this season. After starting from the pole, Honeycutt picked up win number four with the team, winning the third round of the 2026 Allen Turner Pro Late Model Series at Pensacola, Florida’s Five Flags Speedway.
“Yeah, it was awesome,” said Honeycutt after the race. “I think we got a really good piece. We needed to improve a couple spots from the Flake last year and we got a good piece to work with, but definitely wasn’t satisfied with what we had. We’re definitely going to work on some things, but I can’t thank this whole JC Motorsports group enough, Alex Roberts, Jimmy and Jamie Cox for the opportunity to run with this amazing race team.”
The win marks the 17th overall win this year thus far for Honeycutt and his first in Pensacola in a Pro Late Model, joining his previous wins in a Pro Truck, Modified, and Super Late Model. In fact, all of his previous wins have come during Snowball Derby week, until now.
“We’ve had a really good year,” he said. From the CARS Tour, other races like here and other racetracks and just had a good year so far. I really can’t complain, and I’m really thankful for the opportunity. Thanks to Circle B Die-cast, Toyota Racing, Tricon Garage, everyone that lets me come do this on off weekends. I love coming out here in Pensacola. This is actually the first race I (have) won here, not being on the Derby weekend.”
This night served as another step on the “Road to the Snowflake 125” in December, so laps turned on track equal lessons learned for later, and even though this night’s conditions were hot and slick, the top finisher understands the importance of applying notes gained on this weekend to December.
“It could be 40 degrees. It could be 70 to 90 degrees when we come back here in December,” said Honeycutt. “Any notes are good. We haven’t actually ran on this tire since last year. We run ones (Hoosier ST1) and threes (Hoosier ST3) on the (CARS) Tour and this is F45 stars (Hoosier 45*). So yeah, we got some things to learn. We found some things in practice today that were kind of odd about them, so yeah, we’ll be able to go back and make them better and make the car a little better too.”
It wasn’t all smooth sailing for Honeycutt, as there was a bit of a moment at the start of the second half of the race. On the lap 50 restart, the leaders raced into turn three where it appeared the car driven by the night’s fast qualifier Ryan Luza tagged the back of Jack Finch. That sent Finch up the track and to the back, and created a scenario that allowed Jim Wall to fill a gap that led to him taking the lead through turn four. Wall led until lap 57, when Honeycutt assumed the top spot for the final time.
“Yeah, we had a really good car,.” Finch said. “Started second, felt like we had a good car, had a really good car, honestly. Probably one of the best that I’ve had here in a while. We’ve struggled with some free moments and stuff in the past and worked on it hard yesterday and felt like we got it to a good spot. Then the second half, little chaotic start. Kaden got a good jump and I was kind of on his right rear quarter panel and he kind of slid up. So I kind of gave it to him. And then going down into three, I just got absolutely shipped by the No. 9 (Luza) and got sent up into the marbles and had to gather it up and everything.”
From there, Finch found himself battling back through traffic. In the end, he was only able to get back to where he started the night… second.
“I had a really good car to go from the back all the way back up to second,” Finch added. “But by then, the leader is too far out to get to him and how close all of us are, how good Kaden is, and how close all of our cars are is really hard to. I got my gap. Gosh, I really wonder what the gap was before I got to second, but got it pretty close and just never really had enough time to kind of get there. But had a really good car and second stings a little bit with how good it drove tonight.”
Jim Wall was relishing in his best career finish at Five Flags, and spent time at the front of the field in the process, driving a car he described as the best he’s ever had in Pensacola.
“We had a great car today,” said Wall. “I don’t think we had anything for the guys up front. We were able to get the lead after the lap 50 restart. The seas just kind of parted there and we just tried to take advantage of it. But throughout the race, I tried to get a little bit free getting in and that just kind of messed up the center and that was our achilles heel tonight. I was free in and just trying to fight that. But other than that, we had a great car.”
When asked about how much of an improvement this race was over previous outings in Pensacola, Wall was ecstatic about the night’s result.
“Absolutely,” said Wall. “We’ve tried a few things here recently that seemed to have hit on. It’s our best finish at Pensacola to date. And I think that shows what we’re hitting on is working and we just got to keep fine tuning it and keep the right rear on it the next time.”
Finishing Results – Allen Turner Pro Late Model Series 100 – August 28, 2026:
1. 54 Kaden Honeycutt
2. 18 Jake Finch
3. 91 Jim Wall
4. 9L Ryan Luza
5. 9s Dustin Smith
6. 99 Cody Martell
7. 62 Cole Denton
8. 43 Augie Grill
9. 11 James Patrick
10. 100 Weston Marthaler
11. 67k Zach Dixon
12. 31 JT Chastain
