Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series
EJP 175 — New Hampshire Motor Speedway
Saturday, September 20, 2025
Ford Unofficial Finishing Results:
2nd – Chandler Smith
3rd – Layne Riggs
5th – Ty Majeski
16th – Jake Garcia
20th – Blake Lothian
24th – Ben Rhodes
26th – Matt Crafton
27th – Tyler Tomassi
30th – Derek White
35th – Stephen Mallozzi
NOTE: Layne Riggs and Ty Majeski advance to the Round of 8 while Chandler Smith and Jake Garcia are eliminated.
LAYNE RIGGS, No. 34 Bare Knuckles Brawl Ford F-150 – “I feel like this was a solid day. It wasn’t the truck’s fault, like the chassis and truck itself, we just kind of missed the setup. I’ve never been here before. I feel like the sim didn’t really 100 percent correlate, so that kind of screwed me up in practice and just kind of missed the front end. It didn’t really turn as good as it needed to all day, so we were a third-place truck and did what we were supposed to do and finished third. I tried to be a good teammate trying to help Chandler get in. I wish he could have gotten the win, but just glad both Front Row Motorsports trucks were fast at the end and in contention for it.”
CHANDLER SMITH, No. 38 Long John Silver’s Ford F-150 – “I feel like it’s a little bittersweet, to be honest with you. I had a fast truck that was capable of winning. I started hauling butt there at the end and running down the 11, but it wasn’t in the Lord’s Will today, honestly. I pulled everybody together before the race. We prayed together and I wanted to let them know that I’m proud of them no matter the outcome today. We’ve had so much fun this season and the way this deal came about so late, I felt like honestly, don’t get me wrong, we had the expectation of wanting to go win, but we’ve really accomplished a lot more than I think we all envisioned us to do, so it’s bittersweet. It’s bitter because I would obviously like to race for a championship, but it’s sweet because I know that we have trucks capable of winning every time we show up to the racetrack. It just wasn’t meant to be, it’s as simple as that. We finished 30th at Darlington, which was on me. We had a mechanical issue last week at Bristol and finished 30th again and then came here and finished second. We’ll move on and just try to win these last few races.”
TY MAJESKI, No. 98 Soda Sense/Curb Records Ford F-150 – YOU STRUGGLED IN TRAFFIC. ANYTHING YOU CAN POINT TO? “I wish I knew. It’s not a balance issue. It’s not loose or tight, we’re just kind of four-wheel sliding in traffic. It’s really frustrating because there’s nothing that we can do at the racetrack to help it, so I don’t know. We’re gonna have to go back to the shop and think about it. We’ve got a lot of good people at ThorSport and we’ll be able to figure it out. It was just a frustrating day. It started out promising and once the field flipped our day just turned upside down and really took me all day to fight back to where we did. All of those yellows didn’t help me. If we could have had a green flag run, I probably could have picked my way through there a little bit quicker, but those restarts just killed me and needed the race to develop and everybody get single-file before my truck would show.” HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT MOVING ON AND THIS NEXT ROUND? “I feel like we’re in a good spot. Six of the last seven races we’ve been in the top five, so we just need to keep doing what we’re doing and if we do that, we’ll advance to Phoenix. There are some crazy racetracks coming up. It’s kind of a wild card round. Our road course package has been pretty good and that’s been one of our strengths. Hopefully, we can go to the Roval and have a good run and not be in a must-win situation come Talladega and Martinsville.”
JAKE GARCIA, No. 13 Quanta Services Ford F-150 – “I didn’t really think we were ever that good today. We never got the balance right and didn’t have a good day speed-wise. It sucks to get bounced like that, but I’m still proud of everything our guys accomplished over the course of the season and getting our trucks good for a lot of these races. We had some shots to win and had a pretty good year, so it’s unfortunate to get bumped from the playoffs, but still proud of what we accomplished this year.” WHAT WERE YOU FIGHTING TODAY? “We were just super tight. We never got it to turn. We took some really big swings at it and nothing really did much for it, so we’ll have to figure out why that is and what went so wrong this weekend and we’ll move on to the next one. Hopefully, when we come back here or a track like this, we’ll have a little bit better notebook.” WHAT ARE YOUR BEST CHANCES TO WIN THE REST OF THE YEAR? “Probably Phoenix. I’ve run second there in the past. Talladega is anybody’s ball game. We’ll see what happens there. I ran third at Martinsville earlier and I think we learned a lot there for when we come back. I don’t consider myself a good road course racer, but I was running fifth at the end of Watkins Glen, so anything can happen. I would say I feel like we’ve got a shot going into all of them, but definitely think we take this opportunity to work on some stuff for next year hopefully and try to get our trucks a little better and build our notebook a little bit.”
