Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series
Championship Race — Phoenix Raceway
Friday, October 31, 2025
Ford Finishing Results:
2nd – Ty Majeski
4th – Layne Riggs
6th – Jake Garcia
8th – Chandler Smith
13th – Matt Crafton
16th – Luke Baldwin
19th – Frankie Muniz
20th – Clayton Green
29th – Ben Rhodes
32nd – Mason Maggio
TY MAJESKI, No. 98 Soda Sense/Curb Records Ford F-150 – “Obviously, we had a couple of shots at it. The 11 was just a little bit too good tonight for us to overcome. I thought at portions of the race and portions of the run I could pace him and maybe even be a little bit better, but just never could get the restart I needed to get the gap I needed to fend him off long enough to take advantage of the strong portion of the run of our truck. He did a good job of executing all night. I feel like we did too, it was just not quite enough.”
HOW MUCH FIGHT IS IN THIS TEAM? “We obviously had a rough season in the beginning of the year. It was a tale of two seasons. We had a very stern meeting with ourselves in early June and we looked each other in the eye and said, ‘We’re champions. We deserve to be here,’ and we got our season turned around. We went on a streak of now 12 top 10s in a row, nine of them being top fives, and felt like we were poised to defend our title tonight. We were in position to do that, but just a little bit short.”
LAYNE RIGGS, No. 34 Love’s RV Stop Ford F-150 – “I really hated to see that caution, that’s for sure. Leading the race at the end there and looking in the mirror and seeing all of the Championship 4 guys behind us and I was like, ‘Man, if we were in the driver’s, we could win this thing,’ and then the caution comes out. I was like, ‘Oh, great.’ I had no clue we were gonna pit. They were like, ‘pit, pit, pit,’ and it caught me off guard. I didn’t think anybody was gonna pit. We came down and really just fumbled that last pit stop. We only took two tires and we still lost six positions, so that didn’t put us on an even enough playing field to even try to contend for it there at the end, but congrats to Corey winning this championship. He’s obviously the most deserving driver of the year. It’s good for the sport for him to win considering all of his success this season, but that was tough. I definitley learned a lot today. I knew how we needed to trend to be better at the end of these races, especially at this racetrack, but we were so close to a win.”
YOU HAD A GREAT DRIVE FROM THE BACK. HOW WAS THAT? “It was a great F-150. It was fun. I enjoyed driving from the rear of the field through everybody. I pretty much passed everybody on the racetrack. I really had a great truck today. Thank you to Front Row Motorsports and Ford Racing for their fight. I know we had a pretty rough day today and having to start in the rear, but doing the opposite of the leaders got us the lead and we were just trying to manage my tires out front. I really didn’t want to see that last caution, but it’s really tough. Congratulations to Corey. He’s a deserving driver. It’s good for the sport and the series for him to win this championship, but I’m just hopeful that we do change the format next year considering how close it was to our fingertips if we would have been in the driver’s (championship), and how quickly it can get stripped away in just a few minutes after a whole season of work.”
BEN RHODES, No. 99 Campers Inn RV Ford F-150 – “I’m OK. That was definitely one of the harder hits I’ve had in a long time. I wasn’t expecting it. I just watched the replay and I was pretty well just doing my own thing and just get wiped out. I hate it for Campers Inn. They had a good presence out here with some good guests. We didn’t have the necessary pace that we needed all night, but we were making adjustments to fire off better on the restarts to try to pick them up. Phoenix usually, more times than not, can turn into a restart race at the end. We were kind of hoping that would be the case for us as we were making adjustments for short run speed, so unfortunate we didn’t get to capitalize on those adjustments with our F-150, but we’ve got notes to work on.”
