‘I Have a Lot of Choice Words,’ Riggs says after Lap 1 Incident with Enfinger at Charlotte
By David Morgan, Associate Editor
CONCORD, N.C. – To say that Layne Riggs had a rollercoaster of a day at Charlotte Motor Speedway would be an understatement.
Riggs, the driver of the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford, entered Friday’s Round of 8 opener for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs with a decent 22-point buffer over the cut-off line to start the gauntlet to make it to the Championship 4 with races on the Charlotte ROVAL, Talladega, and Martinsville ahead.
But the turmoil would begin almost immediately after the green flag flew when Grant Enfinger made contact with Riggs into Turn 1, spinning him into eventual race winner Corey Heim and dropping them all down the leaderboard.
The green flag flies at the ROVAL, but we have trouble early!
Multiple playoff drivers are involved. pic.twitter.com/88GmWzQYhk
— NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Trucks (@NASCAR_Trucks) October 3, 2025
Riggs day would go from bad to worse when he broke a rear sway bar and would have to limp his way around for the rest of the race to try and salvage something.
It looked as if that was going to happen when Riggs climbed back into the Top-10 in the closing stages of the race, limiting the damage in the points race, but as fate would have it, the trouble for Riggs and his team was not over yet.
On the final restart, Riggs would have a clutch go out on his machine, causing him to fall out of the top-10, all the way down to 21st place by the time the checkered flag flew, making for a tough road ahead to make it to the championship race.
“Just got wrecked by the 9 (Enfinger),” Riggs said. “I do not really understand what his thought process is. Like I said, people say you’re supposed to take advice from the veterans and learn from them on how to race and they race worse out of anybody.
“Except that’s twice this year that we’ve gotten wrecked by the 9 truck at Watkins Glen and here. Both two road courses, two separate incidents, two blatantly wrong on his part. So yeah, we drug a sway bar arm off after that contact. Just had a terrible handling truck the rest of the day.
“And then there at the end, we were just going to try to salvage something and something in the rear end housing broke, or a clutch started slipping, but just had no power there. At the end, the engine was running, just it would not put the power down of the tires.
“Everybody at Front Row Motorsports, Clew Nicotine Pouches, Ford Racing, they deserve a lot better day than today. And like I said, I have a lot of choice words for how the initial start played out and it really disappointed in the amount of talent that took.”
Riggs added that he and Enfinger had a conversation after their previous run-in at Watkins Glen, but admitted that those words obviously fell on deaf ears with how Friday played out.
“He called me and apologized and said he won’t do it again and he’ll make sure that from here on out, he’ll try to give me a little extra help when I need it. And it just blew all that right out of the water,” Riggs said.
Despite the tough start to the race and what looked to be dire straits for him and his team, Riggs explained that he thought they had the day saved prior to the last caution, but things just didn’t go their way for that to pan out.
“I think we could have finished in the top 10. I really wish that last caution hadn’t come out. I think we were running ninth or 10th. I think that would’ve been a pretty good day for us,” said Riggs.
“So just really, really, really not our day. I think we salvaged the absolute best that we could considering the circumstances. And yeah, man, hated to see that caution come out.”
With one of the four spots in the Championship 4 now locked up by Corey Heim, Riggs finds himself in a near dead heat with the remaining seven drivers vying to make it to the finale, now sitting two points below the cut-off line heading to Talladega in two weeks’ time.
Riggs noted that the game plan remains the same for the No. 34 team as they will keep up the fight to make it to Phoenix.
You cannot get any closer than this. #NASCARPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/NG7W9R69JW
— NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Trucks (@NASCAR_Trucks) October 3, 2025
“No different than every other weekend. Go out and try to be as fast as we can and execute and win. And today I feel like we did everything that we were supposed to do and it just got taken from us by a different source. So just like I said, got to keep it going. I know it was hard on everybody on the team,” Riggs said.
“They did a really good job trying to get me back out there and the best they could. We just got to keep our heads high, know that we’re fast.
“Luckily we’re going to have Chandler Smith as a teammate at Talladega, so we’re going to try to work together the best we can, but obviously that’s a huge wild card too. And Martinsville is also a wild card, so yeah, I’m not really understanding this round of the Playoffs, but I thought today was going to be the least of the wild card problems. And next thing I know, I couldn’t even make a corner.
“So, just kind of do the best we can and if we get in, we get in. It’s fate and we did everything we could, but if not, we know that we were fast all year long.”
