Riggs Refuses To Lose, Battles Back To Score Nashville Truck Win

Layne Riggs finally has his own Nashville Superspeedway guitar, he can stop feeling envious of the ones sitting in the basement of his father’s home in Bahama, NC. Riggs captured his third victory of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season in the early hours of Saturday morning in a thrilling finish to the Allegiance 200 at Nashville Superspeedway.

While the evening ended in elation for the rising Front Row Motorsports star, it seemed like the driver was headed toward certain disappointment after he was mired deep in the field due to contrarian pit strategies, and subsequently a set of tires that didn’t agree with his No. 34 Ford F-150.

“I didn’t want to fall back, but I don’t know what happened with that set of tires. But it was literally undrivable,” Riggs explained. “[My Crew Chief] Dylan [Cappello] made the right adjustments, there. Got me the tires. He got me the motivation. Drove it to the front.”

In the end, with the assist of a couple of cautions in the final 30 laps of the race, Riggs had exactly how much time he needed to make up the deficit.

As Riggs skillfully avoided Andres Perez De Lara, who nearly spun out in front of him in Turn 4 with 15 laps to go, the driver would find himself staring up at a more-than-three-second-interval to Rajah Caruth, the race leader.

While Riggs had knifed his way from 10th to fifth, there would still be little time to waste. The driver, who was fastest in Friday’s practice session, and led a race-high 99 laps in the 150-lap contest, mashed his foot on the gas, and didn’t let off until he saw the checkered flag.

With substantially fresher tires than the other drivers ahead of him in the running order, Riggs was consistently half a second, or so, faster with each passing lap. And as a result, the seemingly insurmountable deficit became anything but in the closing laps.

With three laps to go, Riggs made a pass on Chandler Smith, his Front Row Motorsports teammate, for the runner-up spot. He then set his sights on Caruth, the defending winner of this race.

As Riggs worked himself to the outside of Caruth in Turns 3 and 4, in a move for the lead, the two drivers would make contact. Caruth would be credited with leading Lap 149 as the white flag waved, but that white flag might as well have represented the surrender flag for Caruth, who no longer had a play to keep Riggs at bay.

Riggs blew past Caruth in Turn 1 on the final lap of the race, and never looked back, as he would take the decisive win by 0.468 seconds.

While it seemed like a certainty that Riggs would get by for the race lead in the closing laps, Riggs said he wasn’t as confident.

“Until I passed him and cleared him,” Riggs answered when asked when he knew he had the race won. “That’s how you win a NAS-TRUCK race right there, boys and girls. I hope I put on a show for you guys.”

He put on a show on the track, and in victory lane, where he proudly strummed his brand new Gibson guitar, signifying his victory at the 1.33-mile speedway in Lebanon, TN.

Caruth, who started 25th in Friday’s race due to qualifying being rained out earlier in the day, says he was proud of the strategy call that gave him a shot to compete for his second consecutive win in the Allegiance 200, however, he simply couldn’t make his truck wide enough to keep Riggs behind him.

“Yeah, I mean, I was trying to make this thing as wide as possible, obviously, on the tire disadvantage,” Caruth said. “But that was a great call by [Crew Chief] Brian [Pattie]. I think we were strong, just starting in the back with no qualifying impacted our night. We got the truck really strong, there. Just needed, I don’t know, there’s probably some things I should have done there. Huge congrats to Layne, obviously.”

Still, a runner-up finish is a solid result for Caruth, who will now look for his first career NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series win on Saturday evening.

Chandler Smith would hold on to finish third, ahead of NASCAR Cup Series star Ross Chastain, and Tyler Ankrum, who finished fifth.

Stewart Friesen, Grant Enfinger, Christian Eckes, Gio Ruggiero, and Daniel Dye rounded out the top-10 finishers in the race.

With the win, Riggs also took over the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series point lead, as he now holds a 37-point advantage over Kaden Honeycutt.

Honeycutt was running second in the race when his No. 11 Toyota began losing power. After three laps on pit road to address the issues, Honeycutt would be credited with a 27th-place finish.

Seven races remain until the Chase for the championship begins in the NASCAR Truck Series.

Allegiance 200 Race Results

1. 34-Layne Riggs (S1) (S2) (X)
2. 7-Rajah Caruth (i)
3. 38-Chandler Smith
4. 45-Ross Chastain (i)
5. 18-Tyler Ankrum
6. 52-Stewart Friesen
7. 9-Grant Enfinger
8. 91-Christian Eckes
9. 17-Gio Ruggiero
10. 20-Daniel Dye
11. 62-Parker Retzlaff (i)
12. 88-Ty Majeski
13. 1-Brandon Jones (i)
14. 44-Andres Perez De Lara
15. 19-Daniel Hemric
16. 13-Cole Butcher #
17. 26-Dawson Sutton
18. 4-Stefan Parsons
19. 12-Brenden Queen #
20. 14-Mini Tyrrell #
21. 22-Derek Lemke
22. 10-Corey LaJoie, -1 lap
23. 81-Kris Wright, -1 lap
24. 33-Frankie Muniz, -1 lap
25. 93-Caleb Costner, -2 laps
26. 76-Spencer Boyd, -2 laps
27. 11-Kaden Honeycutt, -3 laps
28. 99-Ben Rhodes, -5 laps
29. 2-Clayton Green, -9 laps
30. 5-William Sawalich (i), -30 laps
31. 16-Justin Haley, Out
32. 98-Jake Garcia, Out
33. 15-Tanner Gray, Out
34. 77-Jesse Love (i), Out
35. 25-Carson Ferguson, Out
36. 42-Tyler Reif, Out

(S1) Stage 1 winner
(S2) Stage 2 winner
(X) Xfinity Fastest Lap
# Rookie of the Year contender
(i) Driver ineligle to score series points