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.
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.
James Gilbert | Getty Images
“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.
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.
MOORESVILLE, N.C. — A public memorial service celebrating the life, achievements and lasting legacy of NASCAR champion Kyle Busch will be held on Oct. 9 at Charlotte Motor Speedway following the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race.
The service will be free and open to the public, providing fans, members of the motorsports industry, friends and loved ones an opportunity to come together in remembrance and tribute to one of racing’s most influential and accomplished competitors.
Additional details regarding the service, including timing, speakers and other event logistics, will be announced in the coming days and weeks as plans are finalized.
Entering the penultimate NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race in 2024, Chandler Smith saw the writing on the wall. Despite two victories that season for Joe Gibbs Racing — and an opportunity to still qualify for the Championship 4 — he fully believed he’d be without a full-time ride in NASCAR the following season.
“For somebody that don’t have a job next year in the industry, I’m probably going to be working for my dad on the construction side, just because of how some things are unfortunately playing out,” Smith said in an NBC Sports interview at Martinsville Speedway. “I feel like I don’t owe anybody anything.”
The Talking Rock, Georgia, native fell short of a title-race berth, but lived up to that quote. Smith had a heated scuffle on pit road with Cole Custer after the then-Stewart-Haas Racing driver moved him as they battled for the win late, with Smith quite literally fighting for every inch, unsure what would come next.
“I was very much serious about it because of how late in the season I was notified that I wasn’t going to be back at [JGR],” Smith told NASCAR.com this week, reflecting on that interview. “There was no open seats available for the following year, really.”
Smith learned late that summer he wouldn’t be returning to JGR in 2025. He kept in contact with Bob Jenkins, Front Row Motorsports’ owner and founder, after building a relationship with him while driving for Kyle Busch Motorsports. Smith said a NASCAR Cup Series ride with the organization was on the table, but Front Row hired Zane Smith to drive the No. 38 Ford.
Instead, a different No. 38 Ford came into the picture. Just days before Christmas, Chandler received a call from Jerry Freeze, FRM’s general manager, about driving in the Truck Series. He accepted almost instantly. Freeze went to work on securing race trucks and a hauler for FRM’s second full-time foray and tapped Smith to build out the team’s personnel from scratch.
‘”You go start building your team,” Smith said, recalling the conversation with Freeze. “I was like, ‘What do you mean by that?’ He’s like, ‘Well, do you know any crew chiefs that are available, any engineers? Like, we don’t have anybody at all.’ I was like, ‘You want me to start actively pursuing people?’ He’s like, “Yeah, I’m giving you the liberty and freedom to go do that.’
“I’ve never been in a situation like that, but it made me have a deep respect for the people that have to go through that year after year of finding engineers, finding crew chiefs, all the things that have to go into motion to making a race team successful. Man, I was in the trenches of it at the very start of it, and I’ve never been in that situation where I’ve seen that part of it, looking through those lenses.”
Smith first called Danny Stockman, his former crew chief at KBM from 2020-22, for recommendations. Stockman immediately mentioned Jon Leonard, who, at the time, called shots for a Niece Motorsports entry. It didn’t take much convincing from either party.
“It kind of fell in my lap,” Leonard told NASCAR.com. “To be able to have an opportunity to come to a company that wants to win, or the driver that wants to win, and have that chance … it was a pretty quick and easy decision on my part.”
And that driver/crew chief pairing didn’t take long to develop, either. Both joke that they see and speak to each other more than their spouses.
“[My wife] calls me three times a day, and I feel like I probably talk to Chandler as much or more,” Leonard said with Smith laughing in the background. “You’re around your race team more than you’re around your family a lot of times, and that relationship is super important to me because I can’t have success without him having success, right?
“Everything takes time. The longer we work together, the more we understand, and once you get a baseline, the next step is, OK, what can we do to make this a little bit better, and what’s the next knob we can turn, and what’s the next little tiny thing that will make a difference. Maybe it isn’t a wedge or an easy adjustment, it’s a theory-based conversation, and that’s where me and Chandler talk a lot — I’m able to pawn stuff off of him and he’s able to give me some feedback on what he needs to be better, and I feel like I can give him some stuff that maybe would help that isn’t such an easy knob to push.”
James Gilbert | Getty Images
In their first season together, they won two of the first 10 races and entered the playoffs as the No. 3 seed. But in the opener at Darlington Raceway, Smith pushed too hard early, resulting in contact with the wall and a DNF. The No. 38 team suffered a mechanical issue at Bristol Motor Speedway, forcing a must-win situation in the Round of 10 cutoff at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. They ultimately finished second in Loudon and were eliminated.
Smith and Leonard used that disappointment as motivation. When the calendar flipped to 2026, it didn’t take long for them to find Victory Lane. Smith survived an epic overtime restart in the season-opener at Daytona International Speedway, going from sixth to first in the final set of corners and prevailing in a four-wide finish.
“I really do think that is a huge part of why we did win Daytona. We didn’t turn and start pointing fingers [after last season]. We said, yeah, you’re right, it’s pretty evident this was not meant to be,” Smith said. “It truly wasn’t a good reflection of what we were capable of, and we showed that even throughout the entire playoffs. The Lord didn’t will it that way for us to make it to Phoenix and make it to the final four, but it wasn’t a lack of being able to go out and perform.”
That “childhood dream come true” of winning at Daytona set the tone for a season where Smith remains a top championship threat. Through 13 races — and with just five remaining in the regular season — the No. 38 team sits third in the series ranks, trailing shopmate Layne Riggs by 128 markers heading into Lime Rock on Saturday (1 p.m. ET, FS1, NASCAR Racing Network Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Overall, the numbers are stout, with six top fives and eight top 10s. But the 24-year-old wheelman points to a few races in particular where there were missed opportunities. The team surrendered a top-five finish at Rockingham Speedway in the spring after failing post-race inspection, resulting in a disqualification and just one point. Wrecks took him out of contention at both Charlotte Motor Speedway and Naval Base Coronado, accepting blame for the former. He felt that Dover Motor Speedway was the only race all season where he lacked pace.
“Taking out those four races … I would say we’ve been performing really well,” Smith said. “All those other performances where crap happened, we were still performing at a high level, so I would say on paper it’s kind of rocky, but reality is we’ve been running pretty well, so just need to clean up a few small things. I feel like our pit crew is starting to progressively get a little bit better, which that’s been a weakness of ours.”
And after Lime Rock, the schedule lines up right in Smith’s wheelhouse. The next five races are at tracks a mile or shorter, spanning The Chase opener at Bristol. Five of his eight career Truck wins came at those types of tracks.
Expecting a strong stretch ahead, Smith and Leonard target a final push for the Regular Season Championship — knowing the benefit of additional points to start The Chase. The top team after 18 races begins with 1,100 points — 25 above second and 35 above third.
Is that attainable?
“If you look at Denny’s run [in the Cup Series] and obviously even Layne’s run, I feel like if you do your job and you win stages and you win races, you go string together two, three, four of these next races, I think we can,” Leonard said. “It’s gonna be hard. I think you’re going to need a little bit of help. I do feel like Layne and Kaden [Honeycutt] are probably the two that we got to compete with every week, but he made up a good chunk of ground in a good amount of time, and we’re just kind of feeling like we’re coming into our stretch of tracks we’re really strong at. It’s gonna be work, but I feel like we can do it as a team and a company, for sure.”
This Sunday’s Quaker State 400 (7 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) already marks the 10th event at the reconfigured EchoPark Speedway. And each time back has been a certified banger with action galore. William Byron, Joey Logano and Chase Elliott have all scored multiple NASCAR Cup Series wins in the nine prior meetings and should be in the mix again.
Returning to Fastlane this year is my weekly NASCAR 36 for 36 pick, where you can come play along. It’s a season-long points battle introduced in 2024 where strategy is the primary emphasis. With 36 chartered cars and 36 races on the 2026 schedule, players can choose each car once for the duration of the season.
Driver:Chase Elliott, No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Selections remaining: 6 Comment: The defending race winner and hometown hero has top 10s in half of his eight starts at the reconfigured Atlanta. (He missed the spring 2023 event with a broken leg.) Elliott leads the league with a 9.38 average finish in those starts, and he has four top-five and five top-10 finishes in the last seven drafting-style events.
Driver:Ryan Blaney, No. 12 Team Penske Ford Selections remaining: 3 Comment: Blaney is the hot hand in the Ford camp. The No. 12 team sees lucky sevens across the board entering Atlanta, riding a career-best streak of seven straight top-10 finishes into the weekend. Blaney has also earned seven top 10s at the new Atlanta, leading all Cup drivers.
Driver:Joey Logano, No. 22 Team Penske Ford Selections remaining: 7 Comment: The final seven races of the regular season are favorable for Logano as he ranks 18th in the standings, 16 points behind bubble driver Erik Jones. It’s been feast or famine for him at Atlanta, however, with a pair of victories and five finishes outside the top 15. He has paced the field for a series-high 359 laps at Atlanta in the last nine visits.
Krista Jasso | Getty Images
DRIVERS TO AVOID
Driver:Kyle Larson, No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Selections remaining: 3 Comment: Aside from a podium effort at Atlanta in the spring of 2025, Larson hasn’t had much to celebrate in the Peach State. That third-place effort remains his only top 10 in nine starts on the reconfigured layout, with his six DNFs — all from accidents — being the most among all drivers.
Driver:Denny Hamlin, No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Selections remaining: 1 Comment: Nearly everything has gone the way of Hamlin and the No. 11 team over the last seven weeks, gaining 173 points on Tyler Reddick in that timeframe. That positive momentum could come to a halt this weekend with five finishes of 23rd or worse on the reconfigured layout.
James Gilbert | Getty Images
SLEEPERS OF THE WEEK
Driver:Daniel Suárez, No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet Selections remaining: 8 Comment: Suárez was on the winning side of an epic, three-wide finish in 2024, outlasting Blaney and Kyle Busch. He is consistently in the mix here as his five top-five finishes are the most among all drivers at the reconfigured Atlanta. He’s shined at superspeedways of late, with only one finish worse than 13th in the last seven races.
Driver:Ricky Stenhouse Jr., No. 47 Hyak Motorsports Chevrolet Selections remaining: 8 Comment: The ever-assertive Stenhouse is always a force at drafting tracks, winning a pair of superspeedway races in the Next Gen era. Specific to Atlanta, he has a quartet of top 10s — all in the last six starts — with a best finish of fifth last spring. He has placed sixth or better in three of the last five Atlanta visits.
Meg Oliphant | Getty Images
FEATURED MATCHUPS
Todd Gilliland vs. Alex Bowman Pick: Bowman Comment: While Bowman is the final seed of the 32-team NASCAR In-Season Challenge, Gilliland is the true Cinderella of the tournament. He has a pair of 15th-place finishes and led a career-high 58 circuits in the spring 2024 race. I don’t think that’s good enough to beat Bowman, though, who has a pair of top-five and three total top-10 finishes, placing third in this event last year.
Chase Elliott vs. Chase Briscoe Pick: Elliott Comment: This is the first of three heavyweight matchups this weekend that could truly go either way. Elliott was my original winner of the In-Season Challenge when the bracket dropped, so leaning the way of the No. 9 team. Briscoe finished runner-up in the spring, his only finish better than 15th in nine starts on the reconfigured layout.
Denny Hamlin vs. Christopher Bell Pick: Bell Comment: The Herculean drive from Bell with a fractured wrist continues to the third round, where he’s a recent Atlanta victor (spring 2025). His recent drafting results leave room for improvement; he’s finished 21st or worse in four of the last six Atlanta races and only has one top 10 in the last seven drafting events, period. Hamlin hasn’t been any better in the Next Gen era, so let’s go with the slight upset.
Ryan Blaney vs. William Byron Pick: Blaney Comment: This is the toughest matchup of the tournament thus far. Both are titans when it comes to the reconfigured Atlanta, with Blaney having the most top 10s and Byron being tied for the most wins. The No. 12 team has earned my trust when it comes to consistency, plus he made it to the championship round in my bracket.
MY LINEUP
Starting five: Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano, Bubba Wallace, Daniel Suárez. Garage pick: Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
36 FOR 36
Pick:Austin Hill, No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet Comment: It may have come in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, but Hill has been an unstoppable force at his home venue. He has a knack for success in the draft, scoring a series-record 11 of his 16 checkered flags at superspeedways. He has a 55.5% winning percentage at Atlanta alone.
Editor’s Note: The “Racin’ With The Boys” podcast contains explicit language.
Zane Smith has remained abundantly clear: he is not a Carson Hocevar fan.
The driver of the No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford reemphasized that point in a new episode of “Racin’ With The Boys,” alongside fellow driver Riley Herbst and show host Taylor Lewan, which debuted Thursday.
Hocevar, driver of the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet and a frequent topic of conversation because of his on-track aggression, came up in an exercise in which Lewan asked his guests to describe a driver in one word. Smith didn’t hesitate to call him a “bum-[expletive]” before later explaining his disdain for Hocevar.
“You’ll have run-ins with certain guys, and you’ll have that throughout your career with certain people,” Smith said. “He’ll try to talk to you after saying, ‘Oh, I don’t talk to anybody out there.’ But he’s full of [expletive]. He tries to be your buddy and then will go and screw you. Like, just don’t talk to me in the first place because, one, I don’t like you, and we’re gonna eventually have a run-in together, so let’s just not talk in the first place.”
There is a history of animosity between the pair. During last year’s race at Iowa Speedway, contact from Hocevar sent Smith crashing into the wall, ruining Smith’s day. One week later, Smith shared similar thoughts on Hocevar, and those feelings do not appear to have cooled a year later. Last weekend at Chicagoland Speedway, Smith made contact with Hocevar on Lap 32, sending both drivers up the track and into the wall. Each made his 100th career NASCAR Cup Series start that evening.
“Honestly, my approach with Carson — because he’s fast — me and him had a run-in at Iowa, and we’ve raced hard and whatnot,” Smith said. “And there’s a difference (because) certain guys will race you hard, but he’ll just put us both in a bad spot to where it’s costing us lap time and neither of us are benefiting from it. That part gets frustrating. But I remember he made a mistake — I don’t know if he made a mistake — but he wrecked us and then spends the rest of the race waving at me like playing nice guy of, ‘So sorry! I’m so sorry!’ Then he goes on social media and posts like ‘Admit One’ like ‘I don’t give a [expletive].’ ”
“Like ‘take a number,’ ” Herbst added.
Hocevar addressed their most recent run-in during a Wednesday night Twitch stream after a question was posed in the live chat.
“What’s Zane’s problem? I don’t know, man, maybe his T-shirt sales were low,” Hocevar said. “I don’t know. Who cares?”
Smith said Hocevar puts on “an act to get people to buy in,” which Smith takes exception to.
“It’s like if you’re going to be the guy like hiding behind social media, like I don’t know. That’s a coward in my opinion,” Smith said. “Like, act that way in person. Say that to my face. And it’s like, all right, I’m going to be the same way. But don’t be one way in person and then hide behind your phone. …
“You don’t try to go down a road of like, ‘Oh my gosh, I hope he gets wrecked,’ or something like that. You’re focused on your own race. But it’s just the hiding behind the phone is what’s the most annoying part.”
Drivers have not shied away from weighing in on Hocevar’s persona, including on Lewan’s show.
“Every single driver that’s come on this bus — and you guys have been the most blunt about it — but after, will be like, ‘no dude, [expletive] that guy. The way he drives,’ all this,” Lewan said. “I think [Kyle] Larson basically said, ‘I don’t respect the guy because of the way he drives.’ And [there’s] something about some dude just solely sitting on an island and being hated by everybody — essentially being the Joker from Batman — he’s just like [expletive] it.”
NASCAR reviewed the contact between Smith and Hocevar after Chicagoland and issued no penalties. The two drivers, however, will meet with NASCAR officials prior to Sunday’s race at EchoPark Speedway (7 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Saturday’s NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series’ Focused Health 250 at EchoPark Speedway (7 p.m. ET, The CW, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) completes the day’s unique two-venue race doubleheader after an early afternoon NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race on the Lime Rock Park road course in Connecticut.
And judging by the last two series races on Atlanta’s high-banked 1.5-miler, there is every reason to believe the day may end with an exclamation point. First-time race winners have claimed the last two races there. Nick Sanchez won last summer’s contest, and this February, Haas Factory Team’s Sheldon Creed earned his first O’Reilly trophy.
The driver to beat is the home-state favorite: five-time EchoPark winner Austin Hill. A sixth victory this weekend would give the No. 21 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet pilot the all-time mark — breaking a tie with NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee Kevin Harvick. Hill’s 11 wins and 925 laps led on drafting tracks are tops in each category.
Jesse Love, Hill’s RCR teammate, is the only driver with top-10 finishes at all the drafting tracks in 2026. The No. 2 RCR Chevrolet driver is ranked second in the driver standings to JR Motorsports’ Justin Allgaier, the season’s most dominating racer. Yet Love is still racing for his first win of the season — the only driver ranked among the top six in the standings without a victory.
The 21-year-old — who announced June 17 he’ll move into the NASCAR Cup Series’ No. 21 Wood Brothers Ford full-time next year — has had three runner-up finishes (Phoenix, Watkins Glen and Charlotte) and led the most laps at Nashville Superspeedway in May, only to finish 16th. He’s on a streak of three straight top-10 results and finished fifth after leading 31 laps at Atlanta in February.
Allgaier’s domination continues to be the storyline for the series. His five wins lead all drivers, but the 2024 series champ has endured a couple of recent “off days” by his standards, with sub-25th-place showings in two of the last three races.
The 2024 O’Reilly champion’s 457 laps led, 12 top fives and 15 top 10s — all best among full timers — have contributed to that unprecedented 195-point lead over Love and the field. That gap is bigger than the points difference from Love to Joe Gibbs Racing’s Brent Crews, who sits 12th in the table.
Hill, Love and Allgaier all expect to be challenged again by the defending race winner Creed, who is looking to gain points after a steady couple of months. He hasn’t led a lap since Talladega Superspeedway in April, but has three top-10 finishes in the last four races.
Only four races remain to set the 12-driver field for The Chase. And although Allgaier has secured a spot in the postseason, there is still a lot of movement possible on the other end of scale. Crews holds a 44-point lead over his JGR teammate William Sawalich for that 12th and final Chase position. Rajah Caruth is 48 points off Crews’ pace.
Qualifying is at 11 a.m. ET on Saturday (The CW App).
