Winning the Snowball Derby once is the dream of every short-track racer in America. It puts your name next to giants. Kaden Honeycutt lived that dream in 2024, beating Ty Majeski and Stephen Nasse to park the Tom Dawson Trophy in his shop. But the Snowball Derby doesn’t hand out free passes for past glory. Only a handful of drivers in fifty-seven years have ever won it more than once.

In the last ten years, that list is exactly two names: Ty Majeski and Chase Elliott. Even Kyle Busch, Erik Jones, and Noah Gragson needed several tries just to win it once. So when Kaden Honeycutt rolled into Five Flags this week as the defending champ, everybody wanted to know: Can lightning strike twice?

Honeycutt knows the mountain he’s climbing

Kaden Honeycutt didn’t sugarcoat it when the microphones came out.

“It’s definitely going to be a tall task,” he said with a little smile. “I love coming here. Looking forward to trying to back up our win from last year.”

He’s excited, but he’s not stupid. He knows what repeating really means.

He blew a motor on Monday during practice, which is classic Derby luck. Engines get cooked on that abrasive half-mile, and heartbreak is part of the entry fee. Honeycutt just shrugged.

“No matter what we’ll be in the race… approach is no different.” That calm comes from already having the trophy once. He knows you can’t panic, you can’t overdrive early, you can’t burn the tires off chasing laps you don’t need.

Still, he was honest about the history staring him down.

“I really didn’t expect to have my name on that trophy… it’s really cool,” he said, then added the line that stopped everyone cold: “I want to have it more than once… but I won’t be able to have it two or three times like Majeski.”

That’s respect. Ty Majeski has three Derbys in the last five years and two runner-ups. The guy treats Five Flags like his backyard. Honeycutt just called the mountain by its real name and admitted some peaks are taller than others.

The field is brutal again. Over fifty cars fighting for thirty-six spots. One bad lap in qualifying, one failed tech inspection, one blown tire in practice and the weekend is over before the green flag. Honeycutt has the experience now, but he also has the pressure. Everybody is gunning for the champ.

Just when repeating didn’t seem hard enough, the Pensacola sky decided to get involved.

Mother Nature adds one more twist

Forecast for Derby week is ugly. On Friday, there’s an 84 percent chance of rain during the day, 64 percent at night, and the humidity in the nineties.

Organizers already moved the big Modifieds of Mayhem show from Friday night to Monday afternoon, and they’re ready to shuffle everything else if the radar says so.

One shower on slick tyres, and the track is a parking lot. Teams that drove ten or twelve hours are now changing flights, extending hotel rooms, and praying the radar clears. Fans with Friday tickets are scrambling. But racing people would rather move the whole show to Monday than cancel it.

Nobody came this far to load up and go home. So Honeycutt’s shot at history now has an extra opponent: the weather. Win on Sunday, and he joins the rarest club in short-track racing. Lose to rain, mechanical failure, or just a faster car, and he becomes another one-and-done name on the trophy.

The Snowball Derby doesn’t care that he won last year. It only cares who’s fastest when the checkered flag finally drops, whenever that ends up being. Kaden Honeycutt knows it. Ty Majeski knows it. And every driver in that packed pit area knows it.