Layne Riggs upsets Truck Series championship favorites and wins playoff opener

The LiUNA! 175 on Sunday at Milwaukee Mile was the start of the NASCAR Truck Series playoffs but a non-contender in Layne Riggs stole the show in winning his first career national touring race.

Meanwhile, the first race of the three-race first playoff round was pretty uneventful from a dynamic standpoint. No one won their way into the second and no one had a catastrophic bad race to place them into a must-win scenario over the next two races at Bristol or Kansas.

The three championship favorites — Corey Heim, Christian Eckes and Ty Majeski — all finished inside the top-10. Heim suffered a speeding penalty that cost him stage points during the first half but his pre-playoff advantage was so massive that the end results were marginal.

The only disappointment has to come from Rajah Caruth, who started at the rear due to unapproved changes before the race, and just couldn’t make up the track position deficit but the standings remain close.

Christian Eckes +60
Ty Majeski +44
Corey Heim +41
Nick Sanchez +34
Taylor Gray +13
Tyler Ankrum +13
Daniel Dye +9
Grant Enfinger +2
—
Ben Rhodes -2
Rajah Caruth -4

But again, this night turned into one that celebrated the development of Front Row Motorsports rookie driver Riggs and rookie crew chief Dylan Cappello. It’s been a challenge throughout the year to make them comfortable in their new roles.

The Front Row Motorsports truck program has won a championship with Zane Smith and crew chief Chris Lawson. Riggs has won Late Model races and championships but the Truck Series is a different kind of racing platform.

Riggs, son of Cup mainstay Scott, has had a lot to learn this season, and while there have been near peaks, there have been a lot of valleys.

“I think this puts a stamp on ‘this guy is a serious contender,’ ‘he is for real’ and ‘this guy can win and this can be normal,’ because we had a rocky start to the season, no question about it, but learned a lot from the ups and downs,” Riggs said. “I just feel fortunate that we’ve progressed each race. This is the third top five in a row that we’ve had.

“This is a short track but we’re still figuring things out but I didn’t think this first win would come this soon. It surprised me and I hope this tells people to start paying attention a little bit.”

He wore it for the first seven months of the season but now he hopes to wear out the playoff contenders one yeae before hopefully joining them.

“I got really humbled. It’s just pushin’ me down, pushin’ me down. You question a lot of things at times,” Riggs said.

Majeski took the lead on the final restart, at the start of the third stage, from Eckes but was then immediately challenged by Riggs.

Even without the win, this was cause for optimism for Majeski.

“I think the fact we missed it as bad as we did and we were as close as we were is super encouraging,” Majeski said. “That means we have a lot of speed in our trucks. It’s just up to us to hit the package right. Joe (Shear, crew chief) and I put our heads together to come up with our Phoenix package and come up with some changes to it to try and make it better for Phoenix.

“I don’t know that we got there quite yet, but I’m super proud of the run we’ve had the last three races. We’re hitting on all eight cylinders right now and super proud of everybody back at the shop who has been working hard over the course of the Olympic break into Richmond and into Milwaukee to get our trucks better. We’re seeing that improvement and I feel good about where we’re at.”

He references Phoenix because that is where the championship will be decided and he intends to be amongst the final four.

Eckes also had a chance to win but had to settle for third.

“I was leading on the bottom and it shot up the race track and just couldn’t recover, I was way too tight” said Eckes, who also scored a stage win for a good points day.

He now holds a 16-point advantage over Majeski atop the Playoff standings. Heim is third, only 19 points back.

“Proud of everybody but a pretty big missed-opportunity,’’ Eckes said.

Results

1. Layne Riggs
2. Ty Majeski (P)
3. Christian Eckes (P)
4. Nick Sanchez (P)
5. Taylor Gray (P)
6. Tyler Ankrum (P)
7. Corey Heim (P)
8. Daniel Dye (P)
9. Ben Rhodes (P)
10. Matt Crafton
11. Tanner Gray
12. Kaden Honeycutt (OP)
13. Grant Enfinger (P)
14. William Sawalich
15. Jack Wood
16. Ty Dillon
17. Sammy Smith (OP)
18. Rajah Caruth (P)
19. Dean Thompson
20. Stewart Friesen
21. Jake Garcia
22. Conner Jones
23. Chase Purdy
24. Matt Mills
25. Timmy Hill
26. Bret Holmes
27. Mason Maggio
28. Spencer Boyd
29. Bayley Currey
30. Dexter Bean
31. Marco Andretti
32. Thad Moffitt
33. Matthew Gould
34. Justin Carroll
35. Lawless Alan
36. Jayson Alexander

More must-reads:

• Layne Riggs separates shoulder celebrating first NASCAR Truck Series win
• Parker Retzlaff dazzles, draws ire of Kyle Busch alliance in final lap of NASCAR Daytona
• NASCAR standings: NASCAR Cup Series points leaders 2024, NASCAR playoff picture