LEBANON, Tenn. – Front Row Motorsports unloaded its newest cutting-edge race truck on Friday at Nashville Superspeedway for Layne Riggs. It was all going according to plan.
Cording a tire in practice resulted in only six timed laps on the race track. Still, Riggs started third for the Craftsman Truck Series’ Rackley 200 and was an immediate threat.
By Lap 19, Riggs was challenging series’ wins leader and regular-season championship headman Corey Heim for the lead. After passing the No. 11 Toyota, Riggs tallied his third career stage victory – all coming in the first 12 races of 2025.
RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Nashville
The first miscue on pit road came at the Stage 1 break, as Riggs lost multiple positions. He was able to scurry up to a runner-up finish in Stage 2 to Heim.
But the final dagger occurred during the No. 34 team’s final pit stop, with front tire changer Blake Hickman getting caught up while changing the right-front tire. Riggs plummeted to eighth in the running order while Rajah Caruth’s No. 71 team got him out in clean air for the start of the final stage.
With the laps dwindling away, Heim made a final charge on Caruth for the race lead. That allowed Riggs to gain quickly, though he couldn’t pass the No. 11 truck for second position. The No. 34 Ford took the checkered flag in third, capping off a three-week stretch of consecutive top-five finishes.
“This one is probably one of the biggest stingers so far,” Riggs said after the checkered flag. “It’s probably the most dominant car I’ve had and not won the race. The last time I felt like that was at Bristol (last year) and we did win.
“It just stings when it feels like I did everything flawlessly on the race track and we just gave it away on pit road. We just have to be better on pit road. These races, especially here in the trucks, it’s so line dominant and clean air means so much. My balance would change tremendously with each [truck] I passed to get to the front. You have to get single-filed out to start making passes and at that point you lose so much track position.”
The same issue for the No. 34 crew occurred at the conclusion of Stage 1 to begin the month of May at Texas Motor Speedway. After pitting from the lead during the opening stage, he recounts dropping to 25th in the running order.
Riggs put it simply, the No. 34 team must improve.
“Just practice more. Get better reps and be smarter,” Riggs suggested of how the No. 34 team can hone in on the issue. “When we get down to these end-of-the-race situations and come in leading, [we] cannot let the pressure get to us.”
It wasn’t all bad for Riggs. Rounding out the podium, he’s now 11 points behind fourth in the regular season standings and picked up a playoff point.