That is not how you want to start a championship run. Layne Riggs rolled into Bristol Motor Speedway as the No. 1 seed for the 2026 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Chase, and he left the postseason opener buried 16 laps down in 32nd place. It is a brutal start, and comfortably the worst finish of the year for the Front Row Motorsports driver.
Early on, everything looked brilliant. Riggs swept the opening stages of the 250-lapper under the lights at the venue known as “The Last Great Colosseum.” But during the caution following Stage 2, things unravelled. A slow stop dropped him out of the lead entirely. He fought back instantly, launching from sixth to third on the restart, before a loose wheel forced him straight to pit road and dumped him two laps down.
To make matters worse, the trouble did not stop there. In the closing laps, Riggs made significant contact with Nick Leitz of Tricon Garage, forcing yet another unscheduled trip to pit road so the No. 34 team could patch up the damage.
It seems the top seed curse is real. Riggs' nightmare continues a wider trend of early struggles for the top seeds across all three national series. In the Cup Series, Denny Hamlin holds just a nine-point advantage over Kyle Larson after a pair of Chase races, while Justin Allgaier lost his O'Reilly Auto Parts Series points lead to Sheldon Creed following trouble at Darlington and World Wide Technology Raceway.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Front Row Motorsports garage endured a miserable night as well. Chandler Smith, piloting the No. 38 Ford as the No. 3 seed, caught a pit road speeding penalty right before the final stage. Later in the race, Smith suffered the exact same mechanical heartache as his teammate, pitting for a loose wheel before ultimately crossing the line three laps down in 24th place.
