Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Cup Series
Ford Racing Media Zoom Call
Tuesday, June 2, 2026
Layne Riggs, driver of the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford F-150, is the hottest driver on the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series circuit after registering his second straight victory last weekend in Nashville. Riggs now has eight career series wins, which ties him for second on the all-time Ford list and eight behind leader Greg Biffle. He was this week’s Ford Racing media call guest and answered questions about his recent streak and what lies ahead at Michigan International Speedway.
LAYNE RIGGS, No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford F-150 – COMING OFF TWO STRAIGHT WINS, WHAT HAS BEEN THE SECRET? “I’m gonna dedicate it all to my team here at Front Row Motorsports. They’ve done an amazing job building these trucks for Chandler and I. We’re really trying to process and work together through this new body change over the off-season. The guys in the fab shop have been doing a great job. They’ve just built a lot of raw speed into our trucks that we’re able to take to the racetrack. Charlotte, we hit it pretty close and got the track position and were able to win. Nashville, we’ve always been strong at Nashville, but with everything going on with my confidence, knowing what I need to go fast with the trucks that have speed built into them, with Dylan just being more comfortable as a crew chief making the right adjustment calls, we’ve been able to look a little bit further ahead. Being proactive instead of just reacting to things at the racetrack is really big, but, overall, both of our trucks have shown a lot of speed and that’s all thanks to these guys who work here at this race shop.”
YOU SAID YOUR CONFIDENCE IS AT A HIGH. NOW THAT YOU’VE WON, WHERE IS IT NOW? “You can’t let the highs get you too high or the lows get you too low, so every weekend is a new challenge. This weekend at Michigan, we were not great. We were kind of mediocre at Michigan last year, so I think we’ve got some things to work on, but we’ve been working in the Ford Racing simulator a lot. They give us all the great tools to go fast and work to be better. I think it’s just getting that feel and knowing what it takes to win at each type of racetrack. Michigan, that was my first time going there last year. Some other drivers had experience and Cup drivers in the field, we ran OK, but I just didn’t have that edge and didn’t really know what I needed until it was too late. The final pit stop had already happened and I’m like, ‘Oh, man. I wish I had this.’ Now, I can just keep piggybacking off of that and learning as you go from track to track, so I think it’s just that my experience is getting higher. I feel comfortable driving the truck. I feel more comfortable being on the edge of the tire, prolonged through the corner. I know what my limits are now, and I can run a lot closer to that edge comfortable. Like I said, I think that comes from confidence, from winning and just from experience in the seat. It’s finally all paying off. And when I talk about experience it’s not just me, it’s my team too. In 2024, a rookie driver in myself, Dylan Cappello, my crew chief, was a rookie crew chief. We didn’t know what we were doing. We were just out here racing and figuring it out as we went – an entire rookie team that I now feel like has become kind of a staple in the garage as one of the best there. I’m just really proud of everybody and all of the hard work they’ve been doing, not just from the success at the racetrack, but everything here in the race shop that leads up to it.”
WHAT IS IT LIKE TO RACE A TRUCK AT MICHIGAN AND WHAT MAKES IT REALLY TOUGH? “The trucks at Michigan are basically like Cup cars at Atlanta. The leader is never gonna be able to breakaway from the pack. You have to be pack racing the entire time, but it’s not like Daytona or Talladega where you’re two or three-wide in a pack holding it wide open. You still have to have handling and you still have to lift in the corners, but there’s a lot of straightaway time and a lot of throttle time, so it’s gonna be a big trade off between how much handling and downforce do you want to bring versus that raw speed. Last year, we went a little bit too much for the handling and I was just getting motored by down the straightaway and just really couldn’t be aggressive and make moves. This year, we’re gonna take something back that’s gonna have a little bit more raw speed that now I’m comfortable knowing what I need at that racetrack, knowing what I need to go fast. Like I said, just building off of notes from last year, but Michigan is definitely a calculated racetrack. You see how single-file it gets down the straightaways. If you’re not on the outside at the frontstretch, you’re probably gonna lose five to ten spots down one straightaway, so just really calculated moves and make sure you complete your passes is super important and everybody in the field knows that.”
WHERE DID YOU PUT YOUR GUITAR? “Right now, it’s sitting on my couch. I actually tuned it and was playing some chords last night on it. They sounded really, really bad and I’m glad that I was in private while I was doing that.”
COREY HEIM IS GETTING HIS CUP OPPORTUNITY. YOU ARE ONE OF THE TOP DRIVERS IN THE TRUCK SERIES NOW, SO DO YOU SEE THAT AS MOTIVATION THAT YOU CAN MAKE THAT JUMP SOON? “For sure. It gives me confidence as well that I’m gonna have an opportunity in the future, not just from Corey, but you look at Zane (Smith) and (Carson) Hocevar and a lot of other guys that went straight from Trucks to Cup. I feel like that’s a common path nowadays. It seems like when you do get to a national level, you either go straight to Trucks and then you go to Cup, or you go straight to the O’Reilly Series and then go to Cup. You look at somebody like Jesse Love. He’s only run a handful of Truck races before on a part-time basis. He went straight to the O’Reilly Series from the start. I feel like the O’Reilly and Truck Series are more on an equal plane nowadays when it comes to ranking level as both being feeder series where you can make that jump directly up to Cup. I have the confidence that I’m gonna be there one day. I’m waiting for that right opportunity whenever it becomes available, but I do feel like that will be inevitable if I keep staying on track with the performance that I have now and just hopeful and thankful to do what I do now. I’m trying to enjoy it and soak in all the fun I’m having as I work my way up.”
THE TRUCK SERIES HAS BEEN REALLY COMPETITIVE WITH A LOT OF CUP DRIVERS COMING IN. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW THAT’S BEEN THIS SEASON? “It’s very tough to win right now and looking at it, the only Truck regulars who have won this year are myself, my teammate Chandler and Kaden Honeycutt. Everybody else has been a part-time or a Cup driver, at least to my calculations. I haven’t looked too recently, but I think that still stands. It’s just super tough to get that edge when you have all of that competition. KB (Kyle Busch) got two wins this year and kicked all of our butts, so it’s definitely tough to do it right now. I think we only have seven races in our Chase, so there’s only seven races that those guys aren’t gonna be a part of, so they’re gonna be a factor all year long. Just having that edge and being ahead of those guys and being confident that, ‘OK, I’m in the truck every single week.’ We have that edge on them because they’re only in it every few months or so for some of those guys that are part-time, but it is definitely tough to win and I think it’s putting a lot more eyeballs on the series, which is great, and I think that winning gets a little bit more of an attaboy when you do have that competition and you’re like, ‘Hey, you did beat these guys on this list.’ Those are Cup guys. Those are guys that have the experience that should be up at the front winning the races. It’s just that little extra oomph that goes to it when you do win, which I love and it helps us out to be better race car drivers. I think it makes the series more of a staple for sure.”
CAN YOU GIVE US AN IDEA OF WHAT THE SAN DIEGO RACE MIGHT BE LIKE, AND THEN NORTH WILKESBORO SHORTLY AFTER THAT? “San Diego, I don’t think anybody really knows what that’s gonna be like yet. I ran a couple laps in the Ford Racing simulator yesterday, and I have a session scheduled for tomorrow to run some more, but it’s very technical. There’s a lot of very fast, bumpy corners, and you get lost on the racetrack. There are sections that you kind of forget where you’re at because they look so similar to others, so it’s gonna be tough with a minute and a half-ish lap time. I think it’s like nine-minute cautions we figured it’s gonna be, so it’s gonna play some strategy into that. The cautions, when they come out, are gonna make a big difference in how the race plays out, but I feel good about the street course. We had a really good package at St. Pete. I think it’s gonna be a similar style road course package and what we hit on to have speed there for both of our trucks is gonna be able to translate over. It’s just getting that experience on the simulator and feeling confident when you show up at the racetrack that you know exactly what you’re about to see and you’re not just seeing it for the first time. You go out there and run your first lap of practice and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been doing for months.’ You feel comfortable right out of the gate even though you’ve never seen it in person. I’m just gonna have to spend more time in the simulator. I know it comes out on iRacing soon as well, so a lot of my competitors are gonna be doing the same thing, and just trying to find those little extra speed points that somebody else might not pick up on. Going to Wilkesboro, I love that racetrack. I ran there in late models a lot, and ran well in the Trucks both times we’ve been there. I just need that little extra speed in the trucks that we feel like we didn’t have before. The 11 truck with Corey was so strong last year. He was pretty much hard to beat at any racetrack we went to, so, right now, I kind of feel like we’re on that same path for speed on our trajectory. Hopefully, we can keep riding this momentum and run well at both of them.”
THERE’S A LOT OF DIVERSITY IN THE SCHEDULE THESE NEXT MONTH OR TWO. “It is pretty diverse and I like that. It really helps develop us as race car drivers to be better. I feel like when I first got in the Truck Series in 2024 we only had COTA, so I didn’t really have time to develop my skills. I like the road courses. If I’m gonna be a future Cup driver one day, I need to get pretty good at them because those guys are top-notch when it gets up there. I better be ready to go, but I do like the diversity of the schedule. I think it’s good for the fans. If they look at the schedule and see 10 races and five of them are short tracks and five of them are mile-and-a-halves, they get pretty burned out with that. But I think with the variety and the back-to-back nature of them without there being stretches of the same style of racetrack, they get tough for us as a team to be able to switch our mindsets back and forth so quickly between what style of racing we’re doing, but for the fans it definitely creates more excitement and keeps them interested longer.”
ANY ADDED PRESSURE RACING IN FORD’S BACKYARD AT MICHIGAN THIS WEEKEND? “There’s no extra pressure for me. I feel pressure to win every single race. I don’t think there’s any extra pressure for Michigan. We’re gonna do our best as we’ve been doing. I think our results recently speak for themselves and the performance we have. I do think it’s a little bit more of a wildcard race for the Truck Series, not so much the O’Reilly and Cup Series being more of an intermediate style track for them. It’s more of a speedway race for us, but we’re gonna go and give it our best, show what we’ve got, and hopefully that speed rolls over. I’d love to get a win for Ford in their backyard. A lot of people are gonna be there who don’t normally come to the racetrack, so I would love to take some pictures in Victory Lane with those people.”
DO YOU HAVE A CHECKLIST OF WHAT YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH AT THIS LEVEL IN ORDER FOR YOU TO BE READY TO MAKE THE JUMP TO A HIGHER LEVEL? “I don’t have any specific set goals or win counts or a championship I have to get. I just feel like once I’m comfortable enough to know I can jump up in this other series and be good right off the rip and that’s tough for anybody in the Cup Series because there’s no other car like that to learn from. You have to race Cup to learn how to run a Cup car. You look at the tough start that Connor Zilisch has had this year and every driver that starts in the Cup Series their rookie year is usually pretty rough. I think that waiting for the right opportunity that comes when the timing is right, I feel like if it’s a rushed opportunity to do so or something that I’m not really comfortable with or the teams aren’t really set up to be ready to have me yet, I would rather just stay where I’m at and develop a little bit more and wait until that opportunity and timing is right. I would prolong my career. I would be fine with running eight years in the Truck Series and then having a 15-year long Cup career. That sounds like a lot of fun, but just with the way timing works out, you can’t stay but so long or you kind of get stuck. I think it’s easy for drivers to get stuck in a series and get labeled as you’re this series guy. You’re a Truck guy or you’re an O’Reilly guy. The prospects aren’t really looking for you anymore as a guy that wants to move up. I want to move up, but I want the opportunity to be right, so I’m just waiting for that and trying to make sure I do all that I can in the series that I’m in and focus on that and hopefully the rest will take care of itself.”
