LAKEVILLE, Conn. — Layne Riggs has a mind to make his new nickname stick. Same goes for his recent momentum swing.
After scoring a last-lap victory in the San Diego street-course inaugural — the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series’ most recent race on June 19 — Riggs has two wins in the three road-course events that have been held this year. Post-race at Naval Base Coronado, the 24-year-old Front Row Motorsports driver broke out his new alias of “Layne van Riggsbergen,” a nod to road-course ace Shane van Gisbergen, given his newfound road-racing success.
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Riggs will have another opportunity to live up to his billing in the LiUNA 150 at scenic Lime Rock Park, which hosts the Truck Series’ final road-course race of the season in a Saturday matinee (1 p.m. ET, FS1, FOX One, NRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“LVR, hopefully he makes his return,” Riggs said with a smile Friday morning, on the series’ load-in day. “LVR has been doing a lot of practicing in the Ford Racing simulator. Joey Hand, our road-course instructor at Ford Racing, always does a really good job. He’s got a lot of experience at all these places and just really good insight on how to go fast on these road courses. The Fords being fast at all of them has really been a good tale of why. So yeah, I’m excited about it, and hopefully, LVR is just as strong as SVG.”
Saturday’s 100-lap showdown marks the series’ second event at the 1.478-mile road circuit tucked into the majestic hills and sprawling pastures of Connecticut’s northwest corner. Riggs led one lap in last year’s inaugural race at Lime Rock, contending before his No. 34 Ford ran wide on the first turn of the final restart. Last year’s Truck Series champion, Corey Heim, led the other 99 laps in 2025, but is not entered this year as part of his partial Truck schedule.
Riggs’ recent run this season has mirrored Heim’s charge through the schedule during his championship campaign a year ago. He has five consecutive top-five finishes, a tear that includes three victories (Charlotte, Nashville, San Diego), and that uptick has carried him to the top of the Truck Series standings, going from 38 points back at the start of that stretch to a 65-point advantage over his nearest challenger — Tricon Garage’s Kaden Honeycutt — heading into Lime Rock.
Keeping that steady surge going is Riggs’ priority, especially with five events remaining before the seven-race Chase begins.
“I feel like this is where we’re supposed to be, and this team, this is their level they should be performing at. So really happy that we can execute recently, have a lot of good solid runs and win two road courses this season,” Riggs said, calling it a “feat in itself” to prevail in the series’ first event in St. Petersburg’s streets. “… Having the points lead, the biggest lead we’ve had of the year, I’m excited about it. Feel like we just need to focus on managing it. We need to focus more on not making mistakes than we do about having the one extra step ahead of everybody else.
“Silver and bronze are just fine when you have this much of a lead. Right now, the biggest thing is just not having the mistakes, going off track, having pit-road penalties, speeding on pit road, getting in a wreck, having a mechanical failure — all those things that could come into play to quickly take you out of those situations, just to not have those and just keep having top-five runs. Our only goal at the moment is to be seeded No. 1 headed into the Chase, and pretty much besides that, that’s all we can do at the moment.”
Joining the regulars in the 33-truck field are a handful of distinguished guests from other motorsports worlds. Louis Foster, last year’s IndyCar rookie of the year, is set for his NASCAR debut in Freedom Racing Enterprises’ No. 76 Chevrolet, and IMSA competitor Graham Doyle will also make his first career Truck Series start in Tricon’s No. 5 Toyota. Sports-car veteran Colin Braun will be back in Kaulig Racing’s free-agent Ram, and Parker Kligerman will make just his fourth Truck start of the season, but his first with Spire Motorsports’ No. 77 Chevrolet team.
Lime Rock has special meaning for Kligerman, a Connecticut native from Westport, nearly 55 miles south of the track. A number of firsts from his love affair with racing have come at the pastoral course — the first place he saw, drove or won in a race car. It’s part of why he joined the Lime Rock ownership group in 2021.
Kligerman was part of the welcoming delegation of drivers and teams during Thursday’s hauler parade, which proceeded by the stately White Hart Inn in the quaint heart of nearby Salisbury. The community has been tested in recent days by severe storms last weekend that snapped trees and spread power outages through the area, but under sunny skies amid a diligent rebuilding effort, the turnout was strong at the fork of Routes 41 and 44 just to the track’s north.
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The heartwarming moments continued for Kligerman after his at-track arrival for the garage’s Friday opening. He’s racing the No. 77 — a favored number that he’s enjoyed success with — for Spire, which inhabits the former Kyle Busch Motorsports shop. Kligerman raced one season in what’s now called the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series for Busch, and his No. 77 ride wears a KBM decal on its left-front bumper.
“This is a very cool weekend for me, and I had the thought: I was walking down the hill after parking up at the top, and I was like, ‘man, if 9-year-old me knew he was at Lime Rock, and he’s walking down this hill like he did as a kid, but he’s there to race for a top team like Spire in the NASCAR Truck Series, he would’ve just been ecstatic.'” Kligerman said. “That was a cool moment, but yeah, this means a lot, and it’s kind of a dream I didn’t even know to dream, which is hey, you’re gonna come back here in this capacity and get to race at a place that means so much.”
Drivers returning to the cozy road course found some differences from last year’s event in Friday’s track walk — a stretch of repaved asphalt at the exit of the Turn 2 portion of the opening Big Bend sweeper and a smaller patch in Turn 5. The track is deceptively simple, with just seven turns and a layout that’s short by most road-course standards. Kligerman said IMSA veterans typically considered Lime Rock as that circuit’s bullring equivalent to Bristol Motor Speedway, but Truck Series drivers last year encountered a new venue that’s heavy on both right-hand turns and pace.
“I do think it’s a tricky track,” Kligerman said. “It’s high speed and because of that, I think last year a lot of these teams and drivers learned how to tackle this place differently, because you know they kind of got here thinking one way and then realized, wait a second, this is an entirely different track than we probably perceived from the outside.”
Riggs and Honeycutt have monopolized the series’ top two spots in the standings, and likewise, their teams have poured it on for the road courses. Front Row’s Fords and Tricon’s Toyotas have won the last nine road-course events in the Truck Series, dating back to the start of the 2023 campaign.
The last winner outside of FRM/Tricon on road courses? It’s Kligerman, who propelled the family-owned Henderson Motorsports No. 75 Chevrolet to victory at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in 2022.
“I’d love the opportunity to bring it back to the Chevy side a little bit,” Kligerman said of his weekend chances.