Layne Riggs exited his No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford, performed a deep bow to the crowd in the grandstand — emulating Kyle Busch’s signature victory move — and collected the checkered flag after a celebratory burnout in the tri-oval.
“Did it for Kyle, man, did it for Kyle,” Riggs said.
The NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series lost two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch on Thursday to a sudden illness at age 41. Severe pneumonia had progressed into sepsis with rapid and overwhelming complications. Busch had won the Truck Series race at Dover on May 15 — his series-record 69th victory. Eight days later, he was gone.
The North Carolina Education Lottery 200 was supposed to run Friday night. Rain pushed it to 8 a.m. Saturday. Drizzle kept the track wet and pushed it to 9 p.m. Saturday. Then the same rain that shortened the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race Saturday night forced a third postponement — to 10 a.m. Sunday, where NASCAR invoked the adverse conditions provision and set a noon time limit. Riggs completed 110 of a scheduled 134 laps before the clock ran out. It was enough.
“Our hearts are really heavy this weekend,” Riggs said. “I’ve been kind of struggling with it a little bit, just trying to keep my game face on. I was borderline sobbing there at the end.”
His second victory of the season, first at Charlotte, seventh of career — and Ford’s first Truck Series victory on a 1.5-mile intermediate speedway since Ben Rhodes won at Charlotte in 2023. Riggs led a race-high 52 laps and won Stage 2 in a race that featured a record 11 cautions.
Corey Day started from the pole in the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet that Busch had been slated to drive. Day’s race ended early in a dramatic accident on Lap 47 — he threw a block on the No. 17 Toyota of Gio Ruggiero on the backstretch, contact from Ruggiero’s truck turned Day’s Silverado sideways and airborne. Day’s truck completed one full rotation in mid-air before landing upright and colliding with the inside wall near the entrance to Turn 3 with bone-jarring impact.
“I hate it for the No. 7 guys,” Day said afterward. “This is exactly what I didn’t want to do there. I just wanted to give them a good run. I feel terrible. My spotter didn’t do anything wrong. He told me he was there. I thought I was clear, and I wasn’t.”
The decisive moment came on Lap 104 when Riggs credited teammate Chandler Smith for a push on the restart. “Thank you so much to my teammate Chandler Smith. We had a little teammate restart there. He stuck with me and pushed me,” Riggs said. “I’m super proud of him and the performance we had today.”
Two laps later it was Smith who spun underneath third-place finisher Connor Zilisch off Turn 2 on Lap 106 to cause the final caution — allowing Riggs to claim the win under caution after the clock struck noon.
Kaden Honeycutt finished second and retained his series lead by 11 points over Riggs. Honeycutt’s thoughts went where everyone’s did.
“I definitely wanted to be the guy that gave Kyle the bow there, because he definitely deserved it,” Honeycutt said. “If I had won, I was planning on giving Brexton the flag. Just a bad week for all of us; a tough weekend for the whole community. Hug your loved ones.”
And the kicker: “He probably would have laid another butt-whipping on us if he was here.”
Zilisch ran third. Ben Rhodes finished fourth, followed by Ruggiero in fifth. Stage 1 winner Christian Eckes ran sixth. Brandon Jones, Tanner Gray, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and William Sawalich completed the top 10.
Race time: 1 hour, 57 minutes, 52 seconds. Average speed: 83.993 mph. Eighteen lead changes among nine drivers.
Riggs bowed, and the crowd knew exactly what it meant.