Is the NASCAR Truck title coming down to Riggs versus Heim?

With the exception of Chandler Smith and Jake Garcia, things have largely followed the script in the NASCAR Truck Series Playoffs as the first two races at Darlington and Bristol have been won by Corey Heim and Layne Riggs respectively.

There is a bit of a season-long gap between them, but the Tricon Garage No. 11 and the Front Row Motorsports No. 34 are the 1a and 1b of the season so far and very much appear destined to comprise half of the final four at Phoenix Raceway in November.

In fact, Riggs himself very much views it that way after winning the UNOH 200 at Bristol on Thursday.

“I would think so,” Riggs said of the championship likely coming down to he and Heim at Bristol. “I would think us to, and Chandler right now, that’s my three picks. I don’t really know who the fourth is going to be yet, but …”

Does it matter?

“Not really.”

Now, if Smith is supposed to join his teammate and the Tricon ace in the championship this year, it’s going to take either outright winning or at least scoring nearly the maximum points alongside some bad luck befalling someone else.   

Smith crashed out of the playoff opener at Darlington and suffered another 30th–place at Bristol due to a mysterious parts malfunction of some kind.

“I don’t know the specifics of it,” Smith said. “All I know is it sounds like a little sensor, the heavy loads here at Bristol, and I don’t know why it didn’t happen in practice. It’s like this little sensor that is in the engine wiggled its way out under load and that’s what ruined our night.

“I’m a little frustrated because we’re at this high level of racing and a little tiny tiny little sensor like that can ruin your day. I’m mainly frustrated because I knew we had the fastest truck tonight. It was really, really good.”

So now, if Smith is going to make Riggs’ premonition a reality, he is at least going to have to challenge for the win if not outright get it done entirely.

“I’m confident we can,” Smith said. “We just, like tonight, we could have won tonight. We had the fastest truck tonight but we have to cross our ts and dot our is.”

Jake Garcia entered two points above the cutline, won the pole, won his first ever stage and then disaster struck into the first corner of the first lap off the restart.

“Yeah, just a bolt on these motors that holds the belt, the crank assembly, sheared off and just broke,” Garcia said. “I mean nothing we can do about it. Our guys did a really good job on the truck and fixing it, even though it’s not something we can control.

“It’s just really, really frustrating to have something completely out of our control happen like that and end our day when I feel like we had the best truck here tonight.”

What a rollercoaster of emotions that must be to go from being in a position to win your first Truck race and advancing into the second round, to into the infield and now 14 out with just one race left at New Hampshire.

“Definitely gut wrenching,” Garcia said. “Passing was hard tonight but I thought we were good enough to pass our way through the field and compete for the stage 2 win as well, especially with how much tire wear there was tonight.

“It’s just frustrating to go from thinking you’re about to sweep the stages to losing power steering going to turn 3 and then your water skyrockets and realize you have bigger issues so …

“Yeah, really frustrating, sucks we can’t run Ford Racing motors. I’d like to run those but we, we can’t and what happened tonight was out of our control.”

Whatever chance Garcia and Smith might have to advance on points, without winning next week, might come down to the performance of Rajah Caruth, who left Bristol 14 points above the cutline but arguably only by default with playoff finishes of 12th and 15th.

“We shouldn’t be in a position to be needing others to have bad luck,” Caruth said leaving the track on Thursday night.

To wit, if Caruth has another race where he isn’t scoring a lot of stage points and finishes outside of the top-10, that does open the door for Smith and especially Garcia to potentially capitalize.

There is a mathematic pathway there.

Updated playoff grid 

Corey Heim Adv.
Layne Riggs Adv.
Daniel Hemric +51
Ty Majeski +46
Grant Enfinger +29
Tyler Ankrum +29
Kaden Honeycutt +18
Rajah Caruth +14
—
Jake Garcia -14
Chandler Smith -24

Business as usual

Beyond Smith and Garcia, everyone else has maintained the status quo over the first two races at Darlington and Bristol.

Daniel Hemric said on Thursday that ‘the result was good, but the execution was sloppy, sloppy, sloppy,’ but still leaves 51 points above the cutline — just short of a virtual lock. Kaden Honeycutt entered this race seven below the cutline and left it 18 above, even if he felt apologetic for spinning Tyler Ankrum, who is just 29 up instead of arguably 10 more or more higher.

“Yeah, I’m not really sure like kind of what Chandler’s position is because I am worried about him winning,” Honeycutt said. “I know he had a bad night and I assume he’s below and (Garcia) too but I assume if Chandler wins it might knock us below and we need to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“We’ll try to and go do the same deal we’ve done the last two weeks, have a good practice and qualify top 5 and have a good night like we did tonight.”

Like, even though Grant Enfinger had an awful night where he finished 21st and ran there all night too, he is still in a good spot based on his season long performance and his third place run at Darlington. The only thing stopping him from making another final four are these inexplicable nights where the truck just doesn’t respond to their input.

“We came off a good run a couple weeks ago there at Darlington where we ran up front all day and every time I feel like we’re turning a corner, we take a step back for whatever reason,” Enfinger said. “We’re not going to give up and we’re going to work hard but yeah, it’s one of those kind of frustrating nights and I just don’t know what happened.

“We’ll dwell on it for another couple of hours and then start worrying about New Hampshire.”