Many race fans may not have known the name Leland Honeyman coming into 2024, but they’re learning it as the NASCAR Xfinity Series season progresses.
After driving in eight races between Alpha Prime Racing and MBM Motorsports last year, Honeyman made the jump to full time in Xfinity for his rookie campaign. Making the move with him was Young’s Motorsports, who had never competed in NXS prior.
The 19-year-old previously raced for Young’s with crew chief Andrew Abbott in 2022, when he finished third in the ARCA Menards Series East standings. The reunion was a success right away, with Honeyman tallying four straight top 20s early in the season.
The Phoenix, Ariz., native nearly won at Talladega Superspeedway before finishing fourth, and he now sits 20th in points.
Frontstretch caught up with the rookie at Iowa Speedway to talk his start in racing, the relationship with his team and crew chief and how he is adjusting to Xfinity.
Read or watch the whole interview below.
Michael Massie, Frontstretch: Tell me about your start in racing. When did you start out?
Leland Honeyman: I started out racing when I was four years old with off-road trophy trucks. It was kind of a smaller form of a bigger trophy truck for kids. I was four, five and six years old when I did that, and I just kind of moved up through the go-karting ranks to legends cars to late models, bandoleros and then ARCA and Xfinity.
Massie: What was the thing that got you into racing?
Honeyman: I would say more my dad. He pulled the trigger on everything just for me getting in a racecar. He was watching TV one day and saw that these off-road trophy trucks were on TV, and he looked them up on Google or whatever it was back in ’09. I don’t know what it was, but he looked it up and found one for sale and bought one. And I was racing a couple weeks later.
Massie: I saw one thing that says you’re from Phoenix and another that says Mooresville, N.C. Is it your family is originally from Phoenix and you moved to N.C. for racing?
Honeyman: Yeah, so I was born and raised in Phoenix for about 10 years, and then I moved to N.C. when I was about 10 years old. I moved to Charlotte, N.C.,…
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