Layne Riggs won Friday's Ecosave 200 at Charlotte Motor Speedway and cut Kaden Honeycutt's lead in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Chase, the series' championship playoff, from 37 points to 17 with four races left. Riggs scored 74 points to Honeycutt's 54.
Honeycutt led with seven laps to go. On Lap 128 of 134, his No. 11 Toyota broke loose in the top lane and its right rear hit the outside wall, and Riggs went by. Riggs won by 0.596 seconds over Christian Eckes. Honeycutt finished third.
Riggs, 24, drives the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford. He started 13th, won the first stage, one of two segments that pay points before the finish, and was second to Honeycutt in the second. It is his seventh win of the season, to Honeycutt's three, and the 12th of his career, in 75 Truck Series starts. He also won at Charlotte in May.
Behind the top two, Chandler Smith is 77 points behind Honeycutt, Eckes 88 and Daniel Hemric 109.
"I knew what was going to happen"
Honeycutt led 85 laps, the most of anyone, and had been in front since Lap 102. Riggs led 47. Asked whether Honeycutt's slide into the wall gave him his opening, Riggs said Honeycutt "was doing all he could to keep me behind him."
"And I was going to pass him regardless," Riggs said. "But, yeah, at that point it made it pretty easy."
Asked whether he had known how Honeycutt would defend, Riggs said, "100%." He said much the same thing had happened at Kansas, where he made "the bad decision of trying to stay in it and be a hero." This time, he said, "I knew what was going to happen before we even got there."
Honeycutt nearly spun at the wall. "I don't know how the heck I saved that," he said. "Just seeing the replay, I wish I hadn't been air-blocking him as much as I did. It just took away what I was trying to do." Air-blocking is placing a truck so it disturbs the air reaching the one behind it. "I just focused on him too much," Honeycutt said. "I should have run my own race."
He lost second to Eckes before the finish.
"That was a hell of a battle there at the end with me and the 11," Riggs said, using Honeycutt's truck number. "That was a lot of fun."
Honeycutt had repeatedly beaten Riggs off pit road. "I think I had to pass the 11 three or four times," Riggs said. "We've got to still work on pit road. That was our weakness still, but I kept driving to the front."
After Kansas
Riggs was running second late at Kansas Speedway on Sept. 26 when he hit the outside wall. He finished 19th. Honeycutt won that race and took the series lead.
"It was kind of a beat down after Kansas," Riggs said. "Felt like I let my team down."
He said he raced Charlotte differently. "At Kansas, I was up there, and internally I pressured myself that I needed to go win," he said. "Today, I didn't have any pressure. I just went out and wheeled it." Thinking about points, he said, "makes me want to race harder. And that's not something I need to do."
Kyle Busch
The race preceded a celebration of the life of Kyle Busch, the late NASCAR Cup Series champion. Five trucks in the field carried tributes to him. Pole winner Connor Mosack's No. 7 honored Kyle Busch Motorsports' 100th Truck Series win, and Rajah Caruth's No. 77 commemorated the team's first win. Both were taken out in the eight-truck crash late in the race.
Asked whether his second Charlotte win of the year, on the night of Busch's celebration of life, felt fitting, Riggs called Busch "my hero." "I hope that he'd be proud of me," he said.
Behind Riggs and Honeycutt
Eckes was second in the No. 91 Chevrolet. "It's still good to finish second in back-to-back weeks," he said. "Obviously, we want to win, and I feel like we're right on the cusp of doing that."
Bayley Currey, who is not in the Chase, was fourth. Smith, Riggs's teammate at Front Row Motorsports, was fifth after a penalty sent him to the rear during the caution after the second stage. Hemric was sixth, Landen Lewis seventh, Andres Perez De Lara eighth, Tyler Ankrum ninth and Justin Haley 10th. Brenden Queen, 13th, was the highest-finishing rookie.
The race had five cautions for 28 laps, the last for an eight-truck crash in Turn 3 that stopped the race under a red flag on Lap 120 for 12 minutes, 58 seconds.
The Truck Series goes next to Phoenix Raceway on Friday, Oct. 16.