With an incredible lap in qualifying Friday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Layne Riggs now has a handful of first-place starts this year in the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series… and that’s fitting, because if history shows us anything, it’s that Riggs and Front Row Motorsports will be a handful for the field in Saturday’s Team EJP 175.
Clocking in at an unbelievable pace of 29.346 seconds (129.789mph), Riggs had a full two tenths of a second on second-place Kaden Honeycutt, to collect his eighth career pole in the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series and his fourth of the season (and his fifth first-place start).
Riggs, driver of the No. 34 Ford F-150 for Front Row Motorsports, is the winningest driver in the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series this season, and on Saturday, will lead one of his biggest championship rivals, Kaden Honeycutt, to the green flag.
Gio Ruggiero, who spent a significant amount of time at the top of the scoring monitor in Friday’s 50-minute NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series practice, will roll from the third position, with Spire Motorsports teammates Connor Zilisch and Tristan McKee rounding out the top-five.
Daniel Hemric will start from sixth, with Gavan Boschele, running just his second NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series event in the No. 1 for TRICON Garage, rolling off in seventh. Grant Enfinger starts eighth, with ThorSport Racing teammates Jake Garcia and Ben Rhodes rounding out the top-10.
Other notables include Chandler Smith in 12th, Tyler Ankrum in 15th, Ty Majeski in 16th, Christopher Bell in 17th, Christian Eckes in 19th, John Hunter Nemchek in 23rd, and Colin Braun in 30th.
With a packed entry list featuring a total of 41 trucks, five drivers are being sent home prior to the green flag dropping in the Team EJP 175, those being: Luke Baldwin (No. 2 Team Reaume), Mason Massey (No. 20 McAnally-Hilgemann Racing), Dawson Sutton (No. 27 Rackley WAR), Derek White (No. 69 MBM Motorsports), and D.L. Wilson (No. 93 Costner Motorsports).
Sutton is a full-time driver in the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series, and typically pilots the No. 26, but in an attempt to get a funded driver, Toni Breidinger, in the field for Saturday’s event, the team switched numbers between its two entries.
The Team EJP 175 at New Hampshire will take place Saturday at 1:30 PM ET on FOX Sports 1.
