Riggs wins THURSDAY NIGHT NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series at Bristol

Layne Riggs overcame a first-lap spin and drove his No. 34 Ford F-150 to victory in Thursday night’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (NCTS) UNOH 250 Presented by Ohio Logistics at Bristol Motor Speedway (BMS).

Riggs took control of the race on lap 142 and fended off two-time series champion Ben Rhodes to secure his third win of the season, his second victory at BMS, and the fifth of his NCTS career.

“You don’t get two mulligans in the playoffs, and I got two, so I’m not sure what happened on the initial start with the 7. I felt like I was there pretty good, and the first lap of the race to spin out is a blow to your confidence, for sure, but I’ve got faith in this team and I’ve got faith in everybody here. Thank you to all of the fans. You all are great. Thank you for the energy. I’ve got to thank Love’s Travel Stops. Ford Racing. Man, you all are awesome and loud. Thank you to Peak, just everybody involved,” said Riggs.

This was the second race in the Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs, and the win automatically advances Riggs to the Round of 8.

“I think this shows that we’re right there, we’re in contention, we can do it,” said Riggs. “That’s three in a row at Bristol for Front Row Motorsports. It’s a big testament to all these guys. We’ve got a really good package here. Man, I’m excited for New Hampshire. I’ve never even been there, and I already love that race track.”

Rhodes finished second, and Corey Heim, who led a race-high 122 laps and won the second stage, came in third.

“It was a debatable choose on that last restart, lining up behind the truck that stayed out – I think it was the 62 (Cole Butcher). He spun the tires really bad, and we fell back to seventh or eighth, and it was just super track position dependent race. I thought our truck was good. I think the best team won for sure, those guys were lights out. I thought we were second to him, and could run around him, like at the end of stage two. We were on older tires, and we could kind of fend him off. Really just dependent on who was ahead of who, and he happened to be ahead of me. Took us a while to carve through the pack, and get back to a decent spot. I think if we got a restart, we could have raced it out. Just really proud of my TRICON guys. This Yahoo Tundra was really good all day. I felt like we made really good gains throughout practice – I didn’t feel like we fired off great this morning, but huge thank you to them, Toyota and Yahoo and on to the next,” Heim said.

Ty Majeski and Daniel Hemric finished fourth and fifth. Majeski is fourth in the series standings (-87) and Hemric is third (-82) heading into the elimination race at New Hampshire.

After Bristol, Corey Heim leads the series standings by 61 points over Layne Riggs, 82 points over Daniel Hemric, 87 points over Ty Majeski, and 104 points over Grant Enfinger and Tyler Ankrum.

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