Playoff drama headlines Truck Roval debut as Enfinger has run-ins with Riggs, Honeycutt

CONCORD, N.C. -- As it usually does, the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval delivered its fair share of drama to playoff contenders, with opening-lap contact setting the tone for the Round of 8 opener in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series' debut on the 17-turn road course. Right out of the gate, the leaders wrecked on Lap 1 as Grant Enfinger made contact with Layne Riggs, jolting the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford into polesitter Corey Heim and sending the two into the barrier. All three playoff drivers had to claw their way back and were able to tally stage points in the 70-lap affair, but the results told three separate stories: Heim miraculously recovered to score a record-breaking 10th series win; Enfinger snagged a seventh-place result; and a mechanical issue on the overtime restart parachuted Riggs to a 21st-place finish. RELATED: Race results | At-track photos Riggs wasted no time expressing his frustrations with Enfinger after the race. "Just got wrecked by the 9. I don't really understand what his thought process is," Riggs said. "People say you're supposed to take advice from the veterans and learn from them of how to race, and they race worse out of anybody. That's twice this year that we've gotten wrecked by the (No.) 9 truck -- at Watkins Glen and here. Two road courses. Two separate incidents. Two blatantly wrong on his part." Enfinger explained his side of the opening lap, taking responsibility for the incident that caused notable damage to both the Nos. 11 and 34 trucks. "I was trying to get clear into the second row bottom there," Enfinger said. "I thought we were still driving into the corner and 100% cleaned out Layne and Corey. I apologize to those guys. Obviously, it wasn't intentional. I looked like a fool doing that. I was still planning on driving in at least another car length or two and about the time I was turning down, Layne started checking up to hit the corner and I just smoked them." [caption id="attachment_490121" align="aligncenter" width="1300"]Alejandro Alvarez | NASCAR Digital Media[/caption] It wasn't the only run-in Enfinger had with his fellow playoff contenders. On the final lap, Enfinger contacted and the No. 52 Halmar Friesen Racing truck piloted by Kaden Honeycutt and sent him spinning. The two drivers were battling for a top-five finish when Enfinger dove his No. 9 CR7 Motorsports Chevrolet into the Turn 7 hairpin and turned Honeycutt around. Honeycutt swept the first two stages, but the last-lap spin sent him down the results sheet to 14th. After climbing out of his truck, Honeycutt made a beeline over to the No. 9 truck where he had a heated conversation with Enfinger. "It is so hard to hold my tongue about this -- I don’t understand why stuff like this happens," Honeycutt said. "All year, we’ve ran good and just had no results. It is what it is, but thankfully we are only four (points) under, so it could be a whole lot worse." "He was upset. I got into him," Enfinger said of Honeycutt confronting him. "I had a run on (Josh) Bilicki and made the move down there, and I was sliding in there, and Honeycutt was stopping kind of to get a good exit to the corner and I ran into him. It was my fault. It was 100% a racing incident. Those guys have run into me in the past. I ran into them. It definitely wasn't intentional. I don't blame him, but I think they'll look back at it and realize I wasn't just trying to be a clown. It just was a racing deal." Leaving the Roval, the playoff standings couldn't be tighter. Heim locked himself into the Championship 4 and is the only driver feeling safe. Tyler Ankrum now holds second in the standings and is just two points above the cutline, tied with McAnally-Hilgemann Racing teammate Daniel Hemric. Riggs is the first driver out of the provisional title round, just one point below Rajah Caruth at the cutline, while Enfinger and Honeycutt sit seventh and eighth both four points outside the Championship 4. What's on deck? A trip to the daunting Talladega Superspeedway on Oct. 17 (4 p.m. ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) where anything can happen and anyone can grab the checkered flag. "Everybody at Front Row Motorsports, they deserve a lot better day than today," Riggs said of his day after the Lap 1 incident. "I have a lot of choice words for how the initial start played out -- really disappointed in the the amount of talent that that took." "Proud of the day and proud of the effort," Enfinger said. "We had a little bit of pace. We don't have contending pace at a road course yet and I'm not gonna be happy till we have that. But I feel like we finished where we should have, minus my screw up into Turn 1."