Trucks at Charlotte: Quieter Restart at the 1.5

The NASCAR community lost one of its own this week. Kyle Busch, two-time Cup Series champion and the all-time wins leader across NASCAR's three national series with 234 victories, died Thursday at the age of 41. Whatever the rest of the weekend says about itself, it says it quieter for that. The race goes on at Charlotte Motor Speedway, moved by rain from Friday night to Saturday morning, in a Truck Series garage Kyle helped build.

Among the active field, Christian Eckes sits at the top of our composite projections. Eckes hasn't won yet in 2026, but the McAnally-Hilgemann driver is the kind of high-floor intermediate runner who tends to find his way to victory lane when the schedule turns to 1.5-mile tracks. Charlotte is that track.

Chandler Smith is the steady veteran who keeps surfacing in the top 5 without much fanfare. The No. 38 Front Row Motorsports entry has been a top-10 lock at intermediate tracks all season, and at $13 in the FantasyJolt salary list he carries the kind of price-to-floor ratio that decides leagues. Behind him: Kaden Honeycutt, who's emerged as Niece Motorsports' real championship contender after Carson Hocevar moved up to Cup full time. Honeycutt's last four intermediate starts read: P6, P4, P9, P3. Beard Motorsports' Layne Riggs is right there with him — Beard quietly built one of the better Truck programs of the 2020s, and Riggs has run the equipment like a man who knows it.

Then come the cameos. Ross Chastain in the No. 45 Niece — the Cup veteran with a side hustle in Trucks whenever the schedule allows, and a 1.5-mile track is exactly the kind of weekend he picks. Brandon Jones drops down from the O'Reilly grid. Shane van Gisbergen tries his hand at a 1.5-mile aero oval for the first time in a Truck — the road course conversion is a top-tier road racer, but our projections don't see him cracking the top 20 here. The intermediate setup is a different animal from what he's mastered.

What to watch: the race rarely stays clean. Two stages of 35 laps each precede a 64-lap final segment, and the field tends to pancake on every restart. Track position decides most of the laps that matter, which means pit crews and a clean pit road will weigh more than raw speed. Stewart Friesen runs the No. 52 with the kind of patience that wins races when patience is what's required, and Halmar's chassis program has been excellent in 2026. He's not the chalk pick. He might be the smart one.

The deep value lives at $8 with Brenden Queen and at $6 with Travis Pastrana, both of whom project as positive-equity returns even if they finish mid-pack. Queen has flashed enough top-15 speed to suggest the No. 12 is real; Pastrana is Pastrana — high variance, but the kind of variance that pays in GPP play.

Green flag at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Saturday morning, May 23.