Xfinity Rookie Leland Honeyman Wants More Than 20th in Points (2024)

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., just to pursue racing. My dad made the trip out here, it was just me and him. We made the trip to Mooresville just to pursue my racing career. It took a lot for him to do that, and I appreciate that.

Massie: It’s not the first time you’ve driven for Young’s. You drove for them in ARCA East a couple years ago. How did that relationship start?

Honeyman: That relationship started with one of my old late model team owners that I raced for, David Pletcher. He’s really good friends with Tyler Young, and he kind of pointed me and leaned me that way.

I was also working with Lorin Ranier at the time. He kind of pointed me in that direction as well. With that being said, I raced with Tyler Young, Young’s Motorsports, for the 2022 season in the ARCA East. We did seven races, but it was a really good year for us. We had a pole, which is really good for us being a smaller team like we are. So that was a really good year.

Massie: What led to you guys reuniting and jumping to Xfinity together?

Honeyman: A lot of it had to do with Tyler. Tyler called me, it was like early December, and he was like, ‘Do you want to do Xfinity for me full time?’

And I’m like, ‘Nah, you’re joking.’

And he was serious, and I showed up to the shop and he had Xfinity cars there and we started talking more. We had a contract signed, I think it was right after Christmas or right before Christmas. But it was a really good deal.

Massie: So that thing came together pretty late if it was Christmastime, huh?

Honeyman: Yeah, for sure. It was a very quick deal and very late in the season.

Massie: What have the growing pains been like? You adjusting to being full-time in this series and this team never having fielded an Xfinity car before.

Honeyman: I would say practice for me and our team, just because I’m a rookie driver. Obviously, I have my crew chief from the ARCA year, Andrew Abbott, who crew chiefed me in 2022 for the ARCA deal. Not many races to where we could like build a big, big relationship, but we’ve been friends ever since. Even last year, when I raced for Alpha Prime, we talked a lot still.

I would say the biggest thing for us is notes. A lot of these bigger teams have notes from the previous years, and we don’t really have that to go off of. So we fire off a little bit off pace sometimes — just sometimes, not all the time. But that’s what it takes being a new team is learning the track, learning the track for me too. I’m not saying it’s just all not having notes, but a lot of it is me being at these tracks for the first time.

Massie: Why have you and Abbott clicked so well?

Honeyman: We like a lot of the same things. He actually eats a lot of steak, so it’s one of the things we share in common. We’re always talking about new steakhouses or whatever it is. We’re just always looking for the new place to go, even on the road.

I would say me and him probably eat the best on the road out of the whole group, just because he’s like, ‘I wanna eat steak,’ and those guys are like, ‘Oh, let’s go somewhere quick and go back to the hotel or wherever.’

… We like eating steak, so it’s what we’ve always shared. We get along really well, and I really like working well with Panda.

Massie: Wait, what did you call him?

Honeyman: We call him [Abbott] Panda. He is a panda. Yeah, no, I love him.

Massie: How do you like your steak cooked?

Honeyman: Medium, 100%.

Massie: You had that run of four straight top 20s. Did it make you feel like you belong in this series?

Honeyman: Yeah, I would say for sure. As I’m learning more every single week, I feel like it gets a little bit easier. But it’s still harder, just because you’re trying to take in all the information you’re getting from your spotter and your crew chief every single week. At competition meetings, talking about what you can do better, and then taking all that in.

We fired off really good, and then I started taking in information. I’m just trying to learn and build off that and take that information in the right way and not take it in a bad way. … I don’t want to learn 80% of it, I want to learn all of it and use a little bit of what I know too that I think is right and add it to what I know. The information I’m getting and what I know is the biggest thing for me this year.

The four straight top 20 was a really good couple races for us, and we need to probably get back on track to keep doing that. But we’ve just had bad luck. At Sonoma, we lost power steering. In Portland, we were running 11th and I wheel-hopped, I made a mistake myself on the last lap.

The past couple weekends have been really really good, but we just need to get back on a rhythm and keep digging.

Massie: Talladega, you had that fourth-place run. It looked for a second like you were about to win. Did you think you had it won?

Honeyman: I don’t know. Obviously, I was [restarting] on the front row. I’ve never done that in the Xfinity Series. So it definitely was different for me. But other than that, I would say the stuff that I learned after the race and what I could do better — back up to the No. 35 and get that run past Jesse [Love] was the biggest learning experience, as I’ve never done that before.

It was definitely a really good weekend for us as a team.

Massie: You’re 20th in points right now. You’re right around people like Jeremy Clements, Josh Williams, people that have been around in the series for a while. What’s that like?

Honeyman: It’s really cool to be around those guys. I talk to Jeremy and Josh like every single week. I would say we’re pretty good buddies off the track. We’re not super, super close. We talk at the track here and there. They’re always helping me with advice and tips, especially Jeremy.

We’re always parked right next to each other. He’s right next door to us right now. Yesterday, we were talking and I was like, ‘How many starts do you have? 600?’ We were just joking around.

… For me being right behind him in points, and I think we were ahead of him for a little bit there, and we just had some rough patches throughout the weekend and such. But I think if we get back on a rhythm and whatnot, we can be better than 20th. I think we can really do it.

Massie: Cole Custer has the Cold Custard. If a sponsor were to approach you with a play on your name, you got anything up your sleeve already?

Honeyman: I’ve reached out to a few honey companies that are involved with the honey deal. Obviously, it would be a really cool deal just to have my last name involved in a sponsorship deal. If anybody watching this has a honey company that has honey in the name, reach out. We’d love to work with you.