Ford Racing Notes and Quotes
NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series
Tennessee Army National Guard 250 — Bristol Motor Speedway
Friday, April 10, 2026
Ford Unofficial Finishing Results:
2nd – Chandler Smith
6th – Jake Garcia
11th – Ben Rhodes
22nd – Layne Riggs
23rd – Ty Majeski
28th – Cole Butcher
32nd – Luke Baldwin
35th – Frankie Muniz
36th – Clayton Green
CHANDLER SMITH, No. 38 QuickTie Ford F-150 – “Honesty, it just wasn’t in the Lord’s Will for us tonight, but, nevertheless, I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to come out with this No. 38 QuickTie Products Ford F-150 group. Everybody at Front Row Motorsports has been working hard. We obviously had a little bit of a mishap last week, but we had a good result and got it taken away. This week, we backed it up with another great result. I’m just thankful for the Good Lord above and thankful for the opportunity. I’m looking forward to Texas.”
JAKE GARCIA, No. 98 Quanta Services/Curb Records Ford F-150 – “I thought we were a lot better than sixth tonight, especially with the strategy we picked. I thought we were second on our strategy at one point, which I thought was the winning strategy, but no matter where we picked we got put in a terrible spot. On every one of those restarts we fell back quite a bit from where we should have been. We were able to pass about four trucks on that last green flag run in our Quanta Services F-150 to salvage a decent day. I’m really proud of my guys. I feel like we did good this weekend, but just needed some luck and some things to go our way and I think we would have had a different outcome this week.”
BEN RHODES, No. 99 Bommarito Ford F-150 – “We won the second stage and then got off-sequence and started dead last. We drove through the field in that third stage with all those cautions and still made it up to third, and then as soon as I got in third-place I’m just trying to log some laps to get the top burned in and the motor shut off no less than seven times, maybe eight or nine times. Finally, the voltage just dropped. By the time the dash stayed on, I could finally see that the voltage was just bottomed out, so I shut everything off – all the fans and all the driver stuff. At that point, I was still pegged at barely running, like 11.6 on voltage, which is losing power with these motors at that point, so we just had to kind of ride the rest of the race out once that happened.” IT MUST BE FRUSTRATING, RIGHT? “Yeah. What do you do? We ended up in the wrong position after winning the stage. We clearly had – I know we were faster than the 62. We were faster than Bell. I don’t have any problem saying that. Usually, I’m pretty conservative on saying those things, but we were faster and to not be able to even finish – with as good of an F-150 as we had, we should have been in at least the top five. That’s a real disappointment, but it was a solid recovery from the team from the past two weeks. We’re back on the right trajectory for the six-week stretch, which is what we wanted to do, but when you have a truck this good, you really, really want the win.”
LAYNE RIGGS, No. 34 Love’s Travel Stops Ford F-150 – YOU WERE IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME IN THAT INCIDENT. “Yeah, there was nothing I could do there. We were going so fast into the corner. I had my brakes locked up trying to stop, so it’s definitely disappointing that we got wrecked, but, at the same time, I felt like we were close today and within striking distance from a win. We just didn’t quite have that maneuverability and speed that I had here in the fall race. I don’t know if that’s the difference in prep and not really trying to compensate for it like we needed to, or it was more of a setup thing. We were close. I mean, we ran second for a lot of the day and then once we got buried back in traffic, I was just not good at all. I really struggled, but when you get back with the squirrels, you get hit with a nut. That’s just part of it, but it was a good job to everybody at Front Row Motorsports for getting me back on the track. We completed all the laps and that’s what makes champions.”
FRANKIE MUNIZ, No. 33 Malcolm in the Middle Ford F-150 – WHAT HAPPENED? “I don’t know. I actually thought we were running pretty good for us here. I felt pretty quick. We were in the lucky dog position, so I was just trying to do some good lap times. I think there was like 10 to go in the stage and I think the 91, or whoever was leading, had a few lappers between the next guy, so we thought we could get the lucky dog and get back on the lead lap for the last stage. But I felt really racy. We literally talked about when we get in a position where if the fast guys catch us to show bottom so they know I’m always gonna go on the bottom to make them pass me on the top. That’s what I did on every single lap and everybody from first to 13th got by me figuring it out on the top, but the 42, I think, Tyler Reif just maybe got impatient. He’s yelling at me in there saying I’m a lapper and I shouldn’t be racing him, but I’m in the lucky dog position. I’m fighting. I belong on that racetrack just as much as he does, just as much as the leaders do and I’m not gonna back down on that. I haven’t seen a replay, but based on what I felt I went to the middle of the track at the end of the track all the way out to show that I was gonna go back to the bottom and the next thing I know I’m destroying a truck.”
THE IRONY OF PROMOTING THE NEW SERIES AND GOING OUT LIKE THIS. WHAT IS YOUR REACTION? “Hopefully it got TV time. Hopefully people are gonna watch the Malcolm in the Middle reboot right after this race. It’s never the result you want, especially when I felt like we were pretty good here. It’s so easy to go a lap down here. It’s a 15-second lap, but the fact that we were at lap 100-something and we were still in the hunt, we could have gotten back on the lead lap, so I felt pretty good – especially after a week like last week at Rockingham. We were not in it at all, so it feels good when you’re competitive and battling and I’m pushing people out of the way and we’re racing. That’s what I need, but this is my third time at Bristol and I’ve never made it past lap 100, which I guess looks bad on me, but I don’t know. I thought we were really good here today for me and for the team. It’s unfortunate.”
YOU CRUNCHED UP YOUR FACE ON THE TRUCK. “My face! They were like, ‘Don’t crash.’ I was like, ‘If I do, it’ll be spectacular,’ and it was (laughing).”
