Trackin’ Trucks: Layne Riggs Wins at New Hampshire

 

Credit: Sean Gardner

Layne Riggs scored his sixth Craftsman Truck Series victory on Saturday afternoon at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Riggs led 106 laps and survived double overtime in the regular season finale. 

Riggs win at New Hampshire is the first of his CTS career. Additionally, Riggs secured the top seed of the Chase for the series championship, which begins on September 17th. 

“Statement win, this is awesome,” Riggs said. “Thank you to everybody at Front Row Motorsports and Ford Racing. I thought I was off a little bit and thought I was in trouble,” 

Riggs finishes second and third in the stages of the Team EJP 175, but held off Front Row Motorsports teammate Chandler Smith by 0.293-seconds for the win. 

“One, two, Front Row Motorsports, it’s in the name,” Riggs continued, “Let’s bring on the Chase. Only got seven [races] left. No mercy.” 

Kaden Honeycutt finished third, while Stewart Friesen and Connor Zilisch rounded out the top-five finishers. 

The biggest winner outside of winner’s circle quite possibly came from the No. 18 of Tyler Ankrum. Ankrum overcame mid-race mechanical issues and finished in the 16th position. The finish gave Ankrum and the McAnally-Hilgemann Racing team a seven-point edge over Friesen and an 11-point leverage over Jake Garcia. 

“It‘s extremely rare you come to a place as fast as this and have no rear brakes and can‘t fix the problem,” Ankrum said. “We‘ve had adversities like this through the year, and I thought we were done with them. Luckily, Eddie D‘Hondt, my spotter, gave me some advice [in the closing laps].

“Definitely did not want to come to New Hampshire and perform like that. Got lucky. Did not perform like we belong in the Chase,” he added, promising in a couple hours he would be able to “move on past this and go to the shop and improve and race for the championship.”

Friesen had a deeper points difference to overcome after last weekend’s 36-place finish at Richmond. Despite not being able to advance into the Chase, Friesen said he was proud of his team’s effort despite their misfortunes. 

“It was what it was, proud of the Halmar team,” Friesen said. “We just didn‘t bring enough speed all year. We battled today, [crew chief] Bruce [Cook] made a good call to get two tires and up in the front we got the balance pretty close and found a lane I could work with.

“It‘s a bummer, I think we‘re definitely at top-10 team, we just had some misfortune at Richmond last week and some other times throughout the season. We‘ll just go back to work and keep building this team up and get better and better, I promise you that.. … We‘ll go back to work and finish the year as strong as we can and bring better stuff for next year.”

 

A Look Into The Chase 

The Craftsman Truck Series have four weeks to prepare for the first race of the Chase for the championship. 

The first race in the post-season title run will be at Bristol Motor Speedway, where Chase contender Smith finished second to Christopher Bell in the 2026 spring race. 

2026 Chase contenders are as follows: 

1. Layne Riggs 
2. Kaden Honeycutt 
3. Chandler Smith 
4. Christian Eckes 
5. Gio Ruggiero
6. Ty Majeski 
7. Grant Enfinger 
8. Daniel Hemric 
9. Ben Rhodes 
10. Tyler Ankrum