Kaden Honeycutt was left to rue a missed opportunity in Friday’s Black’s Tire 200 at Rockingham Speedway. The TRICON Garage driver’s teammate, Tanner Gray, blocked his way to victory lane, and fans were quick to notice.

Honeycutt began in third and remained there for both stages. Part-time driver and reigning champion, Corey Heim, swept both stages and led 178 laps up front. However, a late-race mechanical issue caused Heim to lose ground, while Honeycutt caught up on the outside.

Nonetheless, the No.11 driver was blocked by Gray’s lapped truck, leaving Heim enough room to pass by uncontested. The result marked Heim’s second win of the season, and his 25th career win as well.

Heim walked away with $100,000 as a result of two consecutive wins in the Triple Truck Challenge. Moreover, he stands to win half a million if he can repeat the feat at Bristol Motor Speedway.

NASCAR on Fox shared the final lap dash on X, writing,

“Corey Heim holds off Kaden Honeycutt at the finish to WIN at Rockingham!”

Fans weren’t thrilled by the result and voiced their frustration with Gray.

“Tanner Gray should just be fired by Tricon right now for that. Absolutely unacceptable for him to block his own teammate,” a fan wrote.

“Heim didn’t hold him off, Tanner Gray did,” another commented.

“What are we doing Tanner??,” an X user said.

“Im sure tanner gray felt that holding onto 17th place 2 laps down was important enough to ruin a race for the win,” someone wrote.

“Lappers racing the leaders when they’re fighting for the win has always been one of the stupidest things I can think of in motorsports. Honeycutt easily had it if Tanner got the hell out of the way, he did all that just to finish 2 laps down anyways,” a fan penned.

Corey Heim ultimately finished 0.090 seconds ahead of Kaden Honeycutt.

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“I tried to shove Tanner”: Kaden Honeycutt comments Rockingham loss

Kaden Honeycutt took the Rockingham loss with grace. The 22-year-old gave his props to Corey Heim and sounded confident of a future win for himself.

Reflecting upon his run-in with Tanner Gray, Honeycutt said,

“I tried to shove Tanner (Gray) as far as I can and hoped that he would have gone to the bottom or something like that, but I don’t really know what I could have done differently other than run me and him down in the marbles and all that.”

“I didn’t want to do that, but I wanted to make sure that me or Corey won the race, and I obviously wanted to win it, but it was good that our Tricon organization could do that,” he added. (via NASCAR’s official website)

Kaden Honeycutt racked up 51 points, while Corey Heim clinched a 76-point haul with his fastest lap bonus adding to his tally. The result marks Honeycutt’s third top-5 in five races.