Layne Riggs’ race at Bristol Motor Speedway got off to a bad start on the very first lap Thursday night. Just after the green flag from his seventh place starting spot, he looked to the inside of Corey Day to make it three wide just as Day moved down to close the gap. That sent Riggs spinning through Turn 4 coming to rest on the pitlane with a big knock to his position and confidence.
But Riggs and his team didn’t give up. With a fresh set of tires and a new motinvation, the No. 34 truck powered through from the back of the field, surging to ninth by the end of Stage 1. More aggressive three-wide moves got him to the bumper of the dominant Corey Heim in the second stage and he finished Stage 2 in the second spot.
If Riggs’ driving was the heroic comeback, though, his pit crew’s performance was the knockout blow. Riggs won the race off pit road in the stage break while a slow stop and bad restart relegated Heim to seventh. That handed Riggs clear air through the final stage to drive away to victory by 0.759 seconds over Ben Rhodes.
“You don’t get two mulligans in the Playoffs and I got two,” Riggs admitted. “Not sure what happened on the initial start… I felt like I was there pretty good. Man, just the first lap of the race, to spin out, it’s a blow to your confidence for sure. But I got faith in this team, I got faith in everybody here.”
The win clinches his spot in the next round of the Truck Series Playoffs, joining Corey Heim as the only two drivers locked into the Round of 8. Riggs said that the performance gives him confidence he can excel at the next race at New Hampshire and contend for the championship.
“I think it just shows that we’re right there, we’re in contention. These guys right here don’t give up, I don’t give up,” he asserted. Man, I’m excited for New Hampshire, I’ve never even been there and I already love that racetrack. Man, bring the Playoffs on, bring ’em on!”
Ben Rhodes finished second. Behind him, Corey Heim managed to recover to a third-place finish. His run at the front was ended by the slow pitstop where he came out fourth. That position loss was compounded when he got stuck behind the one driver that stayed out at the stage break on old tires and struggled to get going on the restart, sending Heim all the way back to seventh.
The result breaks Heim’s streak of three wins in a row, but it is nevertheless Heim’s sixth top-three finish in a row as he continues his dominant season.
“I think our truck was good. I think the best team won for sure, those guys were lights out,” Heim acknowledged. “I thought we were second to him, and could run around him, like at the end of stage two.
“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.”
Playoff drivers Ty Majeski and Daniel Hemric rounded out the top five. The rest of the top ten were not postseason contenders: Tanner Gray, Connor Mosack, Andres Perez, Corey Lajoie, and Matt Crafton.
The Truck Series returns for the final race of the first round of the Playoffs at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Saturday, September 20th. Two drivers will be eliminated from the championship hunt after that race.
With two out of three races complete in the round, the Playoff bubble has become increasingly defined. Rajah Caruth leaves Bristol in eighth in Playoff points, the first driver above the cutline, with a 14-point buffer. Jake Garcia leaves in ninth, -14 to the cutline, and Chandler Smith leaves in the tenth and final spot, -24, with a big gap to make up at New Hampshire.
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