NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — Layne Riggs won the pole for Saturday’s FaithFest 250 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race during qualifying Friday afternoon at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
Driving the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford, Riggs turned a lap of 18.502 seconds at 121.608 mph on the five-eighths-mile race track.
It was the second pole of the season for Riggs and the sixth of his career, which has spanned 69 races.
“Track position here is very important. We didn’t have any last year,” Riggs said. “This is the first time we’ve qualified on the new surface here, so it was kind of throwing the dice for everybody. Nobody really knew exactly what we needed. A lot of people did mock qualifying runs in practice and mine did not go great at all. I was 10 out of 10 tight and would not even attempt to turn, so it was hard to tell my crew chief how much I needed to free it up because it was so tight you couldn’t even really put a number on it.
“I was still during my lap thinking, ‘We’re still way too tight.’ I still thought I was a four out of 10 tight with where I needed to be and snapping free off, so I thought we were gonna be an eighth to 10th place qualifying run. Supposedly, I got very lucky with a cloud, the timing of it all.”
Carson Hocevar will start second in a Spire Motorsports Chevrolet. He was .016 seconds slower than Riggs. Christopher Bell will roll from third in a Team Halmar Toyota.
Corey Heim and Giovanni Ruggiero completed the top five in Toyotas.
Chase Elliott will start sixth in a second Spire Motorsports truck, with Kaden Honeycutt going seventh in another Toyota.
