As the 2025 Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs roll on, few in the NASCAR realm are taking any driver to knock off Corey Heim for the championship.
However, Front Row Motorsports’ Layne Riggs is starting to emerge as a legitimate threat to the eight-time winner this season. Riggs took his third race trophy of 2025 last weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway to lock himself into the Round of 8. But it took a while for things to click for the second-year driver in the No. 34 Ford.
Entering his rookie year in 2024, expectations for Riggs were through the roof, set by himself among others, jumping into a championship-contending team after recently winning a NASCAR Weekly Series title. Through the first nine races of his rookie campaign, Riggs tallied just a single top 10, that coming in the spring Bristol race with DNFs in both the season opener at Daytona and at Texas.
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“I’m looking at the success that Todd (Gilliland) and Zane (Smith) had in the truck and having to go in the shop every week and look at the win banners,” Riggs told NASCAR.com last Thursday at Bristol. “You hear the broadcast people talking about ‘well, this truck should run up front and win races.’ That’s always tough and a little bit of pressure when I’m just trying to kind of get my footing and figure it out. I wouldn’t say it made me run any worse. It just definitely put some more pressure on me to get a little quicker.”
Riggs missed the playoffs in his rookie year, but began a turnaround in his fortune as he found his footing.
He touted how one specific track flipped the script on his Truck career and helped lead to top fives in four of the final seven regular-season races.
“It was Gateway,” Riggs said. “I kind of had this breakthrough moment during the race. We made some adjustments that were backwards from what I thought we needed. (Crew chief Dylan Cappello) didn’t tell me till after the race what he did, and I just couldn’t believe it. I just really pieced together. I was like, ‘wow, this is the feel I’m looking for.’ We ran like 15th all day and then we made those adjustments, and I ended up finishing fifth. I think that was the point of ‘OK, this is the feel I’m looking for. This is what it takes to go fast.’ I was running up front and I just kept applying that to this day. After that race, we pretty much started running top five every race and then got our wins and been a contender and threat ever since then.”
The feel took full throttle at a string of smaller ovals as Riggs scored top fives at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park (IRP) and Richmond before finding pay dirt with his first career victory at The Milwaukee Mile in the postseason opener. He followed with a second consecutive checkered flag at Bristol before closing his maiden Truck campaign with consecutive top 10s at Martinsville and Phoenix.
Trying to keep that momentum through the offseason, Riggs looked for avenues to stay sharp before his second season but a string of internal changes at FRM set the course for an adjustment period that he knew would take time.
“It was definitely tough for us because we made the big change, moving shops, added a second truck, building trucks, hiring three times the people we had,” Riggs said. “It was definitely a little bit of a shock to all of us, but we just kept doing our thing. Now I feel like we’ve gotten stronger from that. At first, I feel like it kind of hurt us a little bit just because growing pains, but now I think it’s just really showing that both trucks are running well week in and week out. When you’re two months out of the seat you haven’t driven a race car, you always question yourself the first race. Can I still do this? After the first lap on the race track, you’re like, ‘oh yeah.’ Like I never left. Just like riding a bike.”
Right out of the gate in 2025, the momentum continued. Riggs didn’t kick off the year with a victorious bang, but found himself close to the top of the standings — getting up to fifth in points after the series returned to Rockingham Speedway.
With a win evading him entering the summer, questions arose about where it would come.
Cut from short-track cloth, Martinsville, Bristol and North Wilkesboro came and went for that opportunity. So where did Riggs end up scoring his first win of the year to punch his first postseason ticket?
Pocono Raceway.
The questions immediately flew to Riggs after climbing out of his truck about how the track must’ve felt like a short track to him. But in that moment, Riggs was ready to dissolve the label.
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“It kind of annoyed me,” Riggs admitted. “In the post-race, I forgot who it was, asked me, ‘So since you won today, Pocono must feel kind of like a short track the way the corners drive.’ I was like, ‘I’m putting my foot down today. I am not labeled a short-track racer anymore. I can do it all.’ I mean, I’ve proven to be fast on road courses, big tracks, short tracks, speedways. I think I’m kind of an all-around driver. I’ll always be labeled the short-track guy just because of what my roots were and how long I spent at a late-model level. But I think that I have just as much confidence, or more confidence, showing up to a mile-and-a-half than I would a short track.”
With a playoff berth secured and a dominant victory at IRP a month later, Riggs set the tone for the type of contender he wanted to be heading into the postseason.
While title-favorite and regular-season champion Heim got the jump at Darlington, Riggs hung with him and arguably had the truck to beat before slamming the wall late in the race trying to hold off the No. 11 Tricon Garage ace.
Riggs responded in grand fashion. He led 110 of 250 laps at Bristol two weeks later to join Heim with an automatic bid into the Round of 8.
Heim may have more than double the wins than Riggs, but looking at on-track performance, he believes the No. 34 team is nearly even with Heim.
“I think just the stopwatch is the biggest tell for everything,” Riggs said. “We’re right there with performance and speed and feel like we have just as much mojo as they do. I feel like they can execute a little better just because they have more experience. Corey’s fourth or fifth year in the trucks now. They’re a little more consistent and put together races, but I feel like we have the raw speed. We’re really strong at Phoenix. Both times I’ve ran there, I’ve been good. I really like that race track and it all comes down to one race. Anything can happen.”
This Saturday will mark Riggs’ 50th career start in the Truck Series as the Round of 10 wraps up at New Hampshire Motor Speedway (noon ET, FS1, NRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
It took a couple of months into his Truck career to really get a feel for it. If this version of Layne Riggs got to speak to himself before Daytona to start his rookie year, he would tell him to be patient.
“Ride the course, it’s gonna come to you,” Riggs said. “Don’t question yourself and your abilities. There’s a lot of people telling you that with the struggles, like ‘you’re doing fine. You’re doing everything right.’ It’s just so hard when you look at the stat sheets and don’t really get to see the results pan out, even though you had the speed and the ability to do it. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Stay strong and just believe in yourself and just keep putting that hard work, and then the results will come.”
