RICHMOND, Va. — The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Richmond Raceway may have been postponed to Saturday (Aug. 15), but it didn’t extinguish the hot and humid of conditions at the 3/4-mile track.
Figuratively, meanwhile, the heat only turned up on drivers around the Chase bubble.
Entering the Black’s Tire 250 at Richmond, Stewart Friesen owned a narrow eight-point advantage over Tyler Ankrum for the final spot in what will be a 10-driver battle for the title. Jake Garcia sat further back, 32 points behind Friesen, entering the afternoon.
As the 250-lap event unraveled, none of the three showed the speed needed to contend for a top five or even a win at that. However, little chinks in the armor of Friesen rose to the surface while Ankrum and Garcia made slight gains.
Ankrum struck first in the opening stage by scoring three stage points. However, a penalty for his crew going over the wall too soon erased the gap between Ankrum and Friesen. Meanwhile, Garcia quietly added a stage point in the second frame with a 10th-place result while Friesen was held scoreless once again.
As has been typical Richmond for the series, the race featured long green-flag runs, which extended into the final stage as well. Halfway through the final stint, several drivers headed to pit road, but both Friesen and Garcia opted to run long. After sacrificing chunks of time for the strategy, both pitted with roughly 40 laps remaining.
Within a short few minutes, however, Friesen’s strategy — and his slim points margin with it — evaporated.
Friesen’s tire let go with roughly 30 laps remaining, sending his No. 52 hard into the outside wall. The damage terminated Friesen’s day, leaving him last place in 36th.
The results of his Chase bubble rivals didn’t help matters, as Garcia surged to finish sixth while Ankrum rallied to 11th. Consequently, Ankrum overtook Friesen for the final Chase spot with one race remaining in the regular season. The McAnally-Hilgemann Racing driver holds a 20-point cushion over Friesen while Garcia shrunk his deficit to 21 points. Brenden Queen (-47), Andres Perez (-49), Tanner Gray (-59) and Justin Haley (-70) also have a mathematical shot at The Chase heading into the final weekend.
Despite the positive spin in his favor, Ankrum’s mindset remains unchanged heading to New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
“It doesn’t change much,” Ankrum told Frontstretch. “It’s really unfortunate when you have a tire go down, it’s out of your control. This place is really sandy and really dirty, and when that green-flag cycle is happening you’re probably dragging stuff off the apron onto the racetrack.”
And in true competitor mentality, Ankrum sympathized a little with Friesen, but not enough to change anything.
“I feel for him, but I don’t feel bad for him,” Ankrum said. “Sorry, I just don’t. I don’t wish ill on anybody but man, that 20 points sounds really nice right now. You can’t relax any. You can get that back, 100 percent you can get that back in two stages at New Hampshire. So we can’t blink when we go there, we’ve got to execute, we’ve got to be perfect from when we unload off the hauler.”
Garcia’s sixth-place finish is his first top 10 in five races, and while it didn’t propel him above the cut line, it gave him a fighting chance to replicate his run to the postseason a year ago.
“We’ll just have to do all we can next week and see where the cards fall with the [Nos.] 18 and 52,” Garcia told Frontstretch. “We’ll run as good as we can. Hope we can have another fast Quanta Services [No.] 98 F-150 and we’ll give it a shot. If it comes down to the end, you try something with strategy, but I feel at the moment to do what you can to have a fast truck and see where it shakes out.”
Frontstretch was unable to get a comment from Friesen on his accident.
Given the Truck Series’ sparse history over the past decade at New Hampshire, the regular-season finale doesn’t reveal a clear favorite. Friesen owns the best finish, which was a fifth-place result all the way back in 2017. He finished 13th in his only other start in 2016, and he missed last season’s race at New Hampshire due to injury.
Ankrum and Garcia each have only made one start at the New England track, coming last year. Ankrum finished 11th while Garcia came home 16th.
The shakeup at Richmond and the take-no-prisoners attitude of the bubble drivers exemplifies the newfound intensity and pressure of the revamped Chase format. Every point, pass and little moment matters, and that was on full display in Virginia.
A week from now, the conversation will be settled. And when the checkered flag flies, 10 drivers will live to fight for the title while all the others will have their bubble burst.
Luken Glover joined the Frontstretch team in 2020 as a news writer before elevating to a columnist, where he served as the longtime writer for The Underdog House. Currently, he is an editor for the site and conducts feature interviews. Glover has covered several forms of racing for the site including NASCAR, CARS Tour, and SRX events.
A 2023 graduate of the University of the Cumberlands, Glover is a promotional writer, elementary athletic director, and basketball coach. He is passionate about serving in his church, playing/coaching a wide variety of sports, and researching motorsports history.