BRISTOL, Tenn. — From top seed, to polesitter, to double-stage winner, to a 32nd-place finish.
That was Craftsman Truck Series top gun Layne Riggs’ Thursday night at Bristol Motor Speedway in the UNOH 250 Chase presented by Mobil 1 opener, and the result left him teetering on the edge of losing the point lead.
In winning the race‘s first two stages with relative ease, Riggs led the race‘s first 135 laps. Then he saw everything dissolve into disarray almost immediately. The team had a slow pit stop at the end of the second stage, dropping Riggs to sixth.
He gained three positions but then returned to pit road with a loose wheel, with the stop leaving him two laps down. Later, an on-track encounter with Nick Leitz left Riggs’ truck crippled, and a night that could have been golden instead ended with Riggs kicking the side of his truck several times after the race.
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“We lost that one,” Riggs said. “We lost that one on pit road tonight. I don‘t know what happened there. I mean, we had a really slow stop, first of all. And then we didn‘t even get the wheel tight, either. I feel like we had the truck to beat. This stings really, really bad.”
Riggs kept the point lead thanks to his blistering runs through the first two stages, but his margin was cut from 25 points to three over second-place Kaden Honeycutt, changing the flavor of the race for the Chase lead.
For Riggs, who won six races during the regular season with a total of 598 laps in front of the field, it was a tough comedown — his worst finish of the year.
“Once you‘re mired in the back and you‘re two laps down, you‘re just riding around with the guys in the back,” Riggs said. “I guess the No. 1 (Leitz) just lost talent and wrecked. I don‘t really know what happened there.
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“I had probably one of the top three hardest hits in my life. I can’t believe the truck was still rolling after that. Everything was just broke, destroyed. We should have just parked it, but I was trying to get as many laps in as possible. You have to beat the guys that are on your lap. Not doing much racing right there.”
Riggs seemed surprised when told he still had the point lead. Front Row mate Chandler Smith and Honeycutt had separate issues in the race’s late going.
“It could have been a lot worse of a day,” he said. “We’ve got to clean that up to win a championship.”