Short track ace Layne Riggs is hoping to see how his prowess will translate to larger tracks in a more powerful vehicle than his late model or truck. On Monday, Kaulig Racing announced he will make his NASCAR Xfinity Series début at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday in the #11 Chevrolet Camaro. Further starts will take place at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Martinsville Speedway on 14 October and 28 October, respectively.
The son of NASCAR veteran Scott Riggs, the 21-year-old won the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series national championship in 2022 with sixteen wins across four tracks. He is the series’ youngest national champion at the age of twenty.
During the title campaign, Riggs began racing in the Craftsman Truck Series with three starts for Halmar Friesen Racing, including a seventh on debut at IRP. He has run three more Truck races in 2023, each with a different team: he finished twenty-eighth at Atlanta for TRICON Garage before migrating to Chevrolet for Nashville (twenty-seventh with Young’s Motorsports) and IRP (third with Spire Motorsports).
“I’ve been watching Layne on the short-track circuit for a couple of years now and I am impressed what he has earned so far in his young career,” said Kaulig Racing president Chris Rice. “He’s had a couple of starts in the truck series and I look forward to seeing what he can do in one of our cars.”
Kaulig’s #11 is the team’s multi-driver car for the Xfinity Series playoffs; the role was originally held by the #10 until Daniel Hemric became its driver for the postseason as he is in driver’s championship contention while the #10 is such for the owner’s title. The quirk arose as the #10 has three wins courtesy of A.J. Allmendinger and Kyle Larson while Hemric qualified for the playoffs on points in the #11.
Derek Kraus drove the #11 at Kansas and the playoff opener at Bristol. Besides Allmendinger, Kraus, and Larson, the #10 was split between Kyle Busch, Ross Chastain, Austin Dillon, Justin Haley, Justin Marks, Daniel Suárez, and Jordan Taylor.
