With just 21 laps to go, Tricon Garage’s Thomas Annunziata was running in second place, preparing for a restart under caution. The 21-year-old seemed poised to get on the podium in just his second Truck Series start, but a disaster of a situation occurred as flames started to appear from under the hood, and fire from near the tyres. It marked the second major incident of the LiUNA 100 at Lime Rock, the first being a multi-truck pileup just a few laps earlier. So, when fans saw the fire unfold live on their screens, they couldn’t believe what they were watching.

Annunziata’s No. 1 Tricon Garage Toyota suffered a severe mechanical failure, pouring heavy oil from the right side of the engine bay that instantly ignited into a massive fire. Fortunately, he quickly dropped his window net and climbed out safely, though the cleanup heavily extended the late-race caution period.

“We honestly don’t know,” Tricon Crew Chief Jerame Donley told NASCAR.com. “It’s kind of chicken or the egg. There’s a lot of stuff that’s melted under there, a lot of stuff got hot. We’ll get back to the shop and try to dissect it and figure out what happened.”

With 21 laps to go, the race resumed, and Chevrolet’s Grant Enfinger took the chequered flag, ending his 40-race winless drought. But what anyone could talk about after the Truck Series race ended was the chaos, even aside from the dangerous fire.

Late in the race, chaos broke out at the front of the field. Just moments after a restart following Ty Majeski’s brake-failure crash, race leader Layne Riggs threw a late block on Landen Lewis heading into Turn 1. The contact sent Lewis spinning across the track, leaving the drivers behind with nowhere to go. A huge chain-reaction pileup followed on the tight Lime Rock circuit.

Several frontrunners, including Thomas Annunziata, Ben Rhodes, and Connor Mosack, were caught up in the wreck as trucks piled into one another.

The NASCAR community shared their thoughts on the Truck Series race like always, and there were some strong thoughts on this incident-filled race.

A chaotic Truck Series race for the NASCAR community to look back on

The fire and the multi-car crash aside, there were other incidents that made the LiUNA 100 just as chaotic. Late in the race, polesitter and Stage 1 winner Layne Riggs made heavy contact with Stage 2 winner Kaden Honeycutt entering Turn 1. The collision sent both frontrunners spinning into the grass, ruining Riggs’ race while Honeycutt recovered to finish third.

The drama had started even before the green flag. During qualifying, Riggs slid off the track and into the mud and grass, forcing his team to inspect the front splitter before the race began. By the end of the afternoon, it felt like almost every stage of the LiUNA 100 had produced another moment of chaos.

“Every time I look at this Truck Series race, there is a truck in the wall, debris on the track, or something on fire,” one fan wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

“There’s a lot going on in this Truck race. Goodness,” another fan added.

The fans who were hoping for an Annunziata podium finish were left disheartened, “man🫩🫩 he was going to win this race.”

Even other stars present at the track in Lime Rock stopped to take a look at the chaos unfolding, including 23XI Racing owner and Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin. A fan pointed that out with a picture, saying,

“Haven’t really checked on the Truck race at Lime Rock Park, but apparently it’s bananaland up there…. Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin just kind of stopped and watched as one of the Kaulig trucks got sent.”

Some also pointed out that the chaos was due to the race being held on a road course. Fortunately for them, this was the Truck Series’ final road-course race of the 2026 season, meaning teams can now turn their full attention back to the ovals for the rest of the year. Before Lime Rock, the series had already visited the Streets of St. Petersburg, Watkins Glen, and Naval Base Coronado.

“Good thing for truck teams, there are no more road-course races until next year, so I guess they don’t have to worry about rebuilding the trucks,” motorsports reporter Bob Pockrass said on the platform, too.

The previous Truck Series road and street course races in 2026, too, were chaotic in their own ways, which makes Pockrass’ comments understandable.

A fan expressed the severity of the incident Annuziata was involved in, and wrote, “Don’t think I ever seen a car/truck randomly go up in flames like that before. Kid looks to be ok but he looked really scared and traumatized.”

Watkins Glen in May, for instance, was wild. A huge crash broke out on a late-race restart down the backstretch, and only a short time later, Ben Rhodes made contact in Turn 2, triggering another multi-truck pileup. To make matters worse, race leader Gio Ruggiero was penalized for a restart violation, completely changing the fight for the win.

At Naval Base Coronado in June, the rough temporary street circuit produced seven cautions as trucks kept hitting the barriers. Veteran Jamie McMurray was among those to crash into the wall, while road course expert Shane van Gisbergen’s title hopes took a major hit after his race ended in the barriers.

From the fire to the pileups and repeated crashes, the LiUNA 100 had just about everything. While Enfinger finally ended his long winless streak, much of the attention after the race was on the chaos that unfolded throughout the afternoon. With no more road-course races left on the Truck Series schedule this season, teams will be hoping for much cleaner weekends from here on.