More than halfway into the 2026 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season, Layne Riggs leads all full-time Truck Series drivers in stage points, is second when it comes to laps led, and has just surpassed Kaden Honeycutt to sit atop the points table for the first time in his career. By any measure, he is the hottest driver at the level right now. So, questions about what comes next aren’t that surprising.

With discussions whether Front Row Motorsports might bump him up to their Cup Series operation amplifying, Riggs is quieting the murmurs in the most modest of ways.

“You have to race Cup to learn how to run a Cup car,” Riggs said, via NASCAR.com. “You look at the tough start that Connor Zilisch has had this year and every driver that starts in the Cup Series, their rookie year is usually pretty rough. I think that waiting for the right opportunity that comes when the timing is right.

“I feel like if it’s a rushed opportunity to do so or something that I’m not really comfortable with, or the teams really aren’t set up to be ready to have me yet, I would rather just stay where I’m at, develop a little bit more and wait until that opportunity and timing is right.”

It is a notably self-aware read from a driver who, one year ago, was saying much the same thing about his own development.

“I do feel like I need, at least another year in trucks or Xfinity, whatever the path is,” entering 2025, Riggs told Racing America. “But, you know, I’m planning on running the 34 truck again next year as of now.

“So yeah, I feel like I just need a little bit more time. I’d like to make some Cup starts, you know, do some part-time stuff with the team. kind of working on stuff right now for next year, hopefully. I mean, nothing’s done yet or even really in talks. That’s the goal, to try to branch out, make some starts next year, either Xfinity or in Cup.”

Putting Riggs’ situation into perspective, moving to Front Row Motorsports’ Cup Series operation would not be a good idea. Sure, he has managed to win multiple races, but at the same time, FRM’s Cup drivers have not been able to make a strong impression.

• Zane Smith has been the best-performing driver so far, and he has only clinched a few top 10s, alternatively missing out on the top 20 in every other race.
• The lack of experience from missing out on the lower levels becomes quite apparent, as one can see in the case of Cleetus McFarland. Despite not having raced a single ARCA season or even a Truck Series season, NASCAR allowed him to run the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series this season on a part-time schedule. As expected, his performances have been rather disappointing. In his recent run at the Nashville Superspeedway, he spun multiple times and even incurred a penalty.

And then what Riggs is mentioning about Zilisch isn’t that hard to understand.

Through 14 races of the 2026 Cup Series season, Zilisch sits 34th with 147 points, 510 points behind the championship leader. He has yet to record a top-10 finish. Twelve months ago, he was putting together one of the most dominant O’Reilly Auto Parts Series seasons in recent memory.

Zilisch won ten races in the 2025 O’Reilly campaign, set the record for most consecutive top-five finishes in series history at 18, and tied Sam Ard and Noah Gragson for most consecutive wins in series history at four.

So, the expectation when Trackhouse signed him to a multi-year Cup deal was not of a rebuilding year.

The results, however, only tell part of the story.

At COTA in March, he was storming back to fifth with the fastest laps on the track before being spun out for the second time in the same race. At Watkins Glen in May, he was running second with eight laps to go when a right-front tire blew, turning a potential maiden top-five into a 20th-place finish.

Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin, when evaluating the situation on their respective platforms, both pointed primarily to Trackhouse Racing’s performance issues rather than to Zilisch’s talent. The car, more often than not, hasn’t been there. But outcomes are outcomes, and the standings don’t distinguish between bad luck and bad pace.

For Riggs, that distinction is exactly the point.

He is not questioning Zilisch’s ability. He is questioning the conditions, including the team, the timing, the readiness, and pointing out that even when those conditions look right on paper, they can still fall short in practice.

That said, for years, NASCAR has followed a hierarchy of competitiveness in its national-level series, where the Truck Series sits at the bottom, and the Cup Series is the premier level of racing. But that image has been changing more recently, and Layne Riggs wants to hop on the trend.

Layne Riggs is aiming to skip an entire series

In the current scenario, the Truck Series has been considered to have the least level of competition of the three national-level series. Drivers who have spent considerable time in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series are usually considered ready for the Cup Series because of the higher competitive levels they face.

However, NASCAR has been following a new trend for the past few years, where Truck drivers have been promoted to the Cup Series without having to spend time in the O’Reilly Series.

Corey Heim, who won 12 Truck Series races and the 2025 Truck championship, is skipping the O’Reilly level entirely and will run full-time in the Cup Series with 23XI Racing in 2027. And Layne Riggs, although rather patient when it comes to his Cup debut, is aiming for the same.

“You look at a lot of other guys that went straight from Trucks to Cup, I feel like that’s a common path nowadays,” Riggs recently said (via NASCAR).

“I have the confidence that I’m going to be there one day. I’m waiting for that right opportunity whenever it becomes available, but I do feel like that will be the inevitable if I keep staying on track at the performance that I have now.”

It cannot be denied that Layne Riggs is definitely challenging for the Truck Series championship this season. And with his recent wins, Riggs has a strong control over the top of the table. Moreover, the Chase format would prioritize him because of his consistent performances on the track.

His Nashville win was his eighth career Truck Series victory, which ties him for second on the all-time Ford wins list in the series, eight behind Greg Biffle’s record. He won from the pole, swept both stages, then found himself buried in traffic after a late-stage pit strategy gamble, and still came back to win on the final lap.

For now, Riggs leads Kaden Honeycutt by 26 points in the standings with seven regular-season races remaining before the Chase. A championship would sharpen the Cup Series conversation considerably. But his own framing makes it clear he is not chasing that timeline, he is chasing the right time.