{"id":242274,"date":"2025-09-20T20:40:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T20:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/242274\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T20:40:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T20:40:19","slug":"nascar-truck-playoffs-feature-upset-elimination-chaos-round-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/242274\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR Truck Playoffs feature upset elimination; Chaos round next"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first round of the NASCAR Truck Series Playoffs featured its first shock elimination as third-seeded Chandler Smith<\/a> was eliminated on Saturday afternoon at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n

Smith opened this round with finishes of 30th and 30th due to a crash and electrical control unit issue respectively and not even a second place in Loudon was enough to offset the damage done.<\/p>\n

The Front Row Motorsports<\/a> No. 38 needed nothing short of a win, and despite the best efforts from the driver and crew chief Jon Leonard, they were the first out alongside Jake Garcia<\/a> of Thorsport Racing<\/a> after Darlington, Bristol and Loudon.<\/p>\n

His best shot might have been on the penultimate restart, where from second, he gave up the front row to line up behind eventual winner<\/a> Corey Heim<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy Xfinity Series experience taught me to give up the front row because that\u2019s a two spot difference if you do everything right,\u201d Smith told Motorsport.com. \u201cWhich, that restart, I didn\u2019t because Gio (Ruggiero) got in front of me.<\/p>\n

\"Chandler <\/p>\n

Chandler Smith, Front Row Motorsports Ford<\/p>\n

Photo by: Meg Oliphant \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cNext restart, I executed and got second back and Corey and I were neck-and-neck on lap time. He started stretching and I started trying some things and I would get to even and even picked up pace and just ran out of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, a driver that entered the playoffs third with a 16-point advantage to the cutoff did not advance to race for a championship but the vibes were not all bad.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like it\u2019s a little bittersweet, to be honest with you,\u201d Smith said.\u00a0\u201cI had a fast truck that was capable of winning.\u00a0I started hauling butt there at the end and running down the 11, but it wasn\u2019t in the Lord\u2019s Will today, honestly.\u00a0I pulled everybody together before the race.\u00a0We prayed together and I wanted to let them know that I\u2019m proud of them no matter the outcome today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had so much fun this season and the way this deal came about so late, I felt like honestly, don\u2019t get me wrong, we had the expectation of wanting to go win, but we\u2019ve really accomplished a lot more than I think we all envisioned us to do, so it\u2019s bittersweet.\u00a0It\u2019s bitter because I would obviously like to race for a championship, but it\u2019s sweet because I know that we have trucks capable of winning every time we show up to the racetrack.\u00a0It just wasn\u2019t meant to be, it\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jake <\/p>\n

Jake Garcia, ThorSport Racing Ford<\/p>\n

Photo by: Meg Oliphant \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Garcia entered this race 14 points out but just never had top-10 speed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just super tight,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cWe never got it to turn.\u00a0We took some really big swings at it and nothing really did much for it, so we\u2019ll have to figure out why that is and what went so wrong this weekend and we\u2019ll move on to the next one.\u00a0Hopefully, when we come back here or a track like this, we\u2019ll have a little bit better notebook.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Had Smith found some way to have won, it would have come at the expense of Rajah Caruth<\/a> or Kaden Honeycutt<\/a>, who were locked in a points battle to see who would be at risk if that worst case scenario happened.<\/p>\n

Both scored stage points and lost track position at various points but Honeycutt and Caruth advanced with finishes of P7 and P10 respectively. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I\u2019m just really glad we executed a full day,\u201d Honeycutt said. \u201cRestarts were great. Lambert (Chris, spotter) did a great job helping me out and keeping me calm and focused on what we were supposed to.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a hectic day and start to our playoffs together, but we have good trucks and we\u2019re in to the next round, and I don\u2019t think any of that is going to change in the next round.\u201d<\/p>\n

Caruth left Bristol saying they needed to be better than hoping for bad days from their competition. And to that point, Caruth scored stage points in both stages and even overcame the loss of track position to score that top-10.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, definitely some relief,\u201d Caruth said. \u201cI think overall this year myself and we as a as a group haven’t been as fast as I’ve wanted to be, but we’ve had spurts of flashes of greatness, flashes of good speed, and today was I think one of those days with running in the top-10 and playing some strategy to get stage points.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe achieved a lot of our goals today, especially expecting (Smith) to be really good and knowing we needed to gain points on (Honeycutt). It was a best-case scenario for us today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Caruth thanked sponsors Rick Hendrick and HendrickCars \u2018just for putting me in the spot and believing in me to go and and race for wins and compete for a championship.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so he\u2019s through to the next round.<\/p>\n

Playoff Grid<\/p>\n

Corey Heim +74
Layne Riggs<\/a> +27
Daniel Hemric<\/a> +6
Tyler Ankrum<\/a> +5
Ty Majeski<\/a> +5
Grant Enfinger<\/a> +2
—
Rajah Caruth -2
Kaden Honeycutt -4<\/p>\n

Jungle rules\u00a0<\/p>\n

Corey Heim pretty much has a race and a half buffer to the cutline thanks to his nine wins, stage wins and all the playoff points that come with it, which is a big deal in advance of the final three-race round.<\/p>\n

– Charlotte Roval
– Talladega
– Martinsville<\/p>\n

These are three chaotic tracks where pure speed and performance will very much play a secondary role to execution and luck.<\/p>\n

It was best articulated by Tyler Ankrum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no idea how to evaluate the second round,\u201d Ankrum said. \u201cThose three, between the Roval, Talladega, and Martinsville, they\u2019re all wild cards and anything can happen. You can easily find yourself third or fourth below the cutline after the Roval.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I don\u2019t know. You just have to go execute. Performance might not matter that much.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Layne Riggs views it too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think execution will matter a lot more than performance,\u201d Riggs said. \u201cHopefully we can run well at the Roval and build us a better points buffer but I do think we\u2019re in a good spot right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unfortunate that Chandler was eliminated today but we can work well together with one goal in mind, which will be good. At Martinsville, we just need to have a good day. I\u2019m excited about it and confident about the races coming up and I do think we learned some things today that we can apply to Phoenix as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Honeycutt thinks he\u2019s going to have to be aggressive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there are two ways to go after the Roval,\u201d Honeycutt said. \u201cYou can either go for stage points because you know everyone is going to flip the stage or you flip the stage and try to get the best finish you can.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt Talladega, I don\u2019t think you can lay back and wait for a crash to happen because you have to drive up there and get stage points because that\u2019s all that\u2019s going to matter come Martinsville, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Caruth says his priority is just minimizing chances to have a bad day.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a free game this round,\u201d Caruth said. \u201cThe Roval is kind of a straight up race but Talladega, anything can happen, and I just think you have to finishes those races. Then, you get to Martinsville and it was jungle rules last year with Christian (Eckes) and Taylor (Gray) and it shows you what guys are willing to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think we just have to live to fight another day and be in the fight through three races. So that\u2019s my approach, even if it\u2019s not the best of days, not to take myself out of it and be there come the end of Martinsville.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first round of the NASCAR Truck Series Playoffs featured its first shock elimination as third-seeded Chandler Smith…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":242275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,10792,129288,991,11909,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-242274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-nascar-truck","10":"tag-nascar-truck-playoffs-feature-upset-elimination-chaos-round-next","11":"tag-new-hampshire","12":"tag-new-hampshire-motor-speedway","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115238563223259442","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}