Stewart Friesen finished 4th in the Team EJP 175 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Saturday, the best finish of any driver who came into the weekend outside the playoff field. Justin Haley, 9th, was the next closest. It was not enough. Friesen ends the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series regular season on 408 points, 7 behind Tyler Ankrum, and the ten-driver Chase, the series playoff, will run without him.
The arithmetic of the afternoon is straightforward. Friesen scored 34 points. Ankrum finished 16th and scored 21. Friesen gained 13 on the driver holding the last spot, and he needed 20. For scale, Layne Riggs won the race and scored 72.
Why he was on the line at all
Friesen has not won a race in 2026. In 18 starts he has one stage win, the bonus awarded at the end of each segment of a race. That is the explanation for a driver who ran 4th on the final afternoon and still missed: a season of finishes, none of them first.
The two drivers had been trading the same position since midsummer. After North Wilkesboro in July they were tied on 336 points apiece. After Indianapolis Raceway Park the following week, Friesen led by 8 and held the final spot himself.
Then came Richmond. Friesen was out with an accident after 213 of that race's 250 laps, finished 36th in a 36-truck field, and scored 1 point. Ankrum finished 11th and scored 29. A 28-point swing in one afternoon turned 8 points inside the field into 20 points outside it.
That deficit was not fatal on its own. A win at New Hampshire, worth 72 points against Ankrum's 21, would have more than covered it. Fourth place covered 13 of it.
The other truck
The miss was not confined to the driver side of the ledger.
NASCAR runs a second championship for the trucks themselves rather than the people driving them, with its own ten-entry field. Halmar Friesen Racing fields two full-time trucks. Friesen drives the No. 52. The No. 62 is driven by Christopher Bell, one of the Cup Series regulars who enter selected Truck races and are barred from scoring points in the series standings. Bell drove it to 7th at New Hampshire on Saturday, three positions behind Friesen, and to a win at Bristol in April.
That Bristol win is the team's only victory of the season.
In the owner standings the No. 62 finished the regular season 11th on 493 points and the No. 52 finished 17th on 408. Neither made the ten. A team that won a race in April has no entry in the championship round and no driver in it either.
The next race is at Bristol Motor Speedway on September 17. Friesen will be there. The championship will be decided without him.