Team EJP 175 Preview: A Loaded Field Meets the Chase Cutline at Loudon

Before the Team EJP 175 becomes a championship race, it has already been a qualifying race. Forty-one trucks arrived for 36 positions at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and Friday afternoon sent five teams home before Saturday's regular-season finale ever takes the green flag.

The names make the squeeze more severe. Christopher Bell, John Hunter Nemechek, Connor Zilisch, Christian Eckes, Connor Mosack and Colin Braun join a field already carrying a points battle that Richmond tightened rather than settled. Kaden Honeycutt arrives after leading 225 of 250 laps in the most complete performance of his Truck Series career. Layne Riggs still owns the championship lead. Tyler Ankrum, Stewart Friesen and Jake Garcia are separated by 22 points around the final Chase position.

That gives Loudon two races at once. The stars and specialists are trying to win. The bubble drivers are trying to survive every stage, every pit stop and every restart without letting a one-race entry take away the points they need.

Layne Riggs put the championship leader exactly where he wanted to be, winning the pole at 129.789 mph. It is his fourth pole of the season and gives the No. 34 the clean air needed to convert FantasyJolt's 70-lap dominator forecast into points. Kaden Honeycutt will start alongside him after last week's 225-lap Richmond rout, placing the two strongest regular-season title contenders on the front row.

The fastest truck in practice belonged to Giovanni Ruggiero, who backed up that speed by qualifying third. Connor Zilisch starts fourth and Tristan McKee fifth, giving three young one-race threats immediate track position. The more useful fantasy developments happened farther back. Christopher Bell starts 17th but remains FantasyJolt's P2 driver at $15, Christian Eckes starts 19th with a P3 rank at $14, and John Hunter Nemechek starts 23rd at P9. Each has room to score through place differential without needing to dominate the opening stage.

The Chase bubble tightened before the race. Jake Garcia starts ninth, Stewart Friesen 13th and Tyler Ankrum 15th. Ankrum owns the 20-point cushion, but both pursuers will see stage points before he does if the field holds its starting order. Luke Baldwin, Mason Massey, Dawson Sutton, Derek White and D.L. Wilson failed to qualify and must be removed from every lineup.

The field limit turned practice and qualifying into the weekend's first pressure session. There was no room for a comfortable installation lap when a small mistake in one of New Hampshire's flat corners could erase an entire race. The track asks a driver to carry speed under braking without sliding the nose, and the cutoff punished five teams that could not find enough of it.

Bell remains the headliner in the No. 62 Halmar Friesen Racing Toyota. He won the 2017 Truck race at New Hampshire and later added two Cup victories and four O'Reilly Series wins at the same track. Few active drivers understand how to find grip at Loudon as well as Bell. Qualifying 17th did not match that resume, but it created one of the slate's clearest advancement paths.

Nemechek takes over TRICON Garage's No. 5, Zilisch is in Spire's No. 71 and Eckes returns in McAnally-Hilgemann Racing's No. 91. Mosack gives Spire another credible contender in the No. 7. Braun returns to Kaulig Racing after an eighth-place finish at Lime Rock, while the organization's five-truck Ram program also includes Brenden Queen, Justin Haley, Corey LaJoie and Mini Tyrrell.

There are local and development stories deeper in the field. Michael Christopher Jr. returns in a second Halmar Friesen Toyota. Tristan McKee is back in the Spire No. 77 after finishing eighth in his national-series debut at Richmond. Gavan Boschele continues his TRICON schedule, and Connor Hall moves into the Niece Motorsports No. 4. McKee qualified fifth and Boschele seventh, proof that the added entries brought more than novelty to the weekend.

Riggs enters the finale with a 61-point lead over Honeycutt, more than a driver can erase in one race under the stage-and-finish points system. The No. 34 team has already done the hard work: five wins, including a 198-of-200-lap demolition at Indianapolis Raceway Park, have secured the regular-season points lead. Saturday can be raced for the trophy rather than the seed.

Honeycutt changed the mood at Richmond. He took the lead on Lap 3, swept both stages and accounted for 90 percent of the race's laps led. The win cut Riggs' advantage, delivered TRICON a one-two finish with Corey Heim and gave Honeycutt a second victory entering the Chase. New Hampshire uses the same tire combination the Trucks raced at Richmond, so the No. 11's long-run speed transfers into the weekend as more than momentum.

The final transfer spot is less comfortable. Ankrum holds 10th place, 20 points ahead of Friesen and 22 ahead of Garcia. Friesen's Richmond spin left him 36th and turned what had been a narrow advantage into a deficit. Garcia went the other direction, driving from 21st to sixth and moving within two points of Friesen. Stage points can change that order long before the finish.

Ankrum cannot simply protect the gap. A quiet 11th at Richmond was enough because Friesen had trouble, but Loudon's 41-truck entry includes several drivers capable of occupying the top 10 without taking championship points pressure into account. Friesen has a second incentive through his own organization: Bell's No. 62 can chase the win while Friesen concentrates on advancing. Garcia, sixth here last year before a late-race fade to 16th, needs both speed and a clean afternoon.

Last year's Team EJP 175 established the shape of a winning day. Corey Heim started from the pole, swept both stages and led 124 of 175 laps. Chandler Smith finished second, Riggs third, Giovanni Ruggiero fourth and Ty Majeski fifth. Clean air mattered, but strategy shuffled the order after Stage 1 and created opportunities for trucks willing to split the cycle.

Riggs is now FantasyJolt's P1 driver at $16 and carries the largest dominator forecast, 70 laps, after finishing third here last year. Bell is P2 at $15, Eckes is P3 at $14, followed by Ruggiero at P4 and Zilisch at P5. Those are normalized ranks across the official 36-truck field, not decimal finish predictions.

Smith may be the best intersection of recent and track form. He won at North Wilkesboro, finished seventh at Richmond and was the only driver who kept Heim within sight at New Hampshire last September. He starts 12th with a P6 rank. Eckes finished ninth in this race last year and now starts 19th with an MHR team that has Ankrum's championship pressure in the next stall. Majeski finished fifth last year and remains one of the series' most dependable flat-track drivers from the 16th starting position.

Honeycutt is the deliberate disagreement. He is $16 and ranked P7 despite starting second and carrying the Richmond win into Loudon. The model respects the ceiling but gives him only five projected laps led, pricing the possibility that the No. 11 will not reproduce a historically dominant afternoon. His front-row position creates race-winning potential, but it offers almost no place-differential cushion.

The $50 cap makes the top of this field unusually restrictive. Riggs and Honeycutt cost $32 together. Bell and Smith cost $30. Any two-driver premium pairing leaves three roster spots to fill with no more than $20, so blindly stacking famous names pushes too much risk into the bottom of a deep 36-truck starting field.

Eckes at $14 and Ruggiero at $13 provide the first modest discounts without leaving the projected top four. The grid separates their fantasy profiles: Ruggiero starts third after leading practice, while Eckes starts 19th and can score by moving forward. Brenden Queen is the lower-cost place-differential play at $8, starting 26th with a P18 rank. Mason Massey missed the field and is not eligible for lineups.

Qualifying creates a second filter. A premium truck that starts outside the top 15 can add place-differential upside. A low-salary truck that qualifies far ahead of its P rank may have already spent its easiest points before the green flag. With only 175 laps, the race does not offer enough dominator volume to rescue two expensive misses.

The safest approach is to identify one likely lap leader, one second contender with finishing strength and three starters whose salaries leave room for position gains. Riggs supplies the cleanest dominator case. Bell, Eckes and Nemechek supply the clearest premium advancement cases. Do not use a driver who missed the field, and do not treat reputation as a substitute for what Friday's speed chart revealed.

Christopher Bell is the specialist pick. No complete winner market is posted with the current slate, so there is no responsible price recommendation. Bell's seven national-series New Hampshire wins and P2 FantasyJolt rank make him dangerous from 17th, but he must pass through traffic before he can challenge Riggs.

Layne Riggs is the control pick. Riggs finished third here last year and has already produced two of the season's defining short-track performances. With the points lead secured, crew chief Dylan Cappello can call the race to win instead of guarding a standings margin.

Chandler Smith is the alternative. Smith was runner-up in this race last season and enters with two 2026 victories. If Bell or Riggs absorbs too much attention, the No. 38 has the track record to capitalize.

Brenden Queen is the FantasyJolt value. At $8 and P18 from the 26th starting position, Queen creates the salary room required to roster a true dominator while retaining measurable advancement potential.

• 129.789 mph: Riggs' pole-winning speed, good for his fourth pole of 2026.
• Five DNQs: Baldwin, Massey, Sutton, White and Wilson missed the 36-truck field.
• 20 points: Ankrum's advantage over Friesen for the final Chase position.
• 22 points: The full gap from Ankrum to Garcia.
• 225 laps led at Richmond: Honeycutt arrives after controlling 90 percent of the regular season's penultimate race.
• 124 of 175 laps: Heim's race-leading total in last year's Team EJP 175.
• Seven New Hampshire wins: Bell has victories in all three NASCAR national series at the track.
• Five dry-weather sets: Truck teams receive one practice set, one qualifying set that transfers to the race and three new race sets.
• Stages at 55 and 110: The cutline can move twice before the checkered flag.

The Team EJP 175 starts Saturday at 1:30 p.m. Eastern on FS1. The race covers 175 laps and 185.15 miles, with stages ending at Laps 55, 110 and 175.

Five teams are already gone. By the end of 175 laps, the 10-driver Chase field will be set. Between those two cutoffs sits a Loudon race loaded with more proven winners, rising prospects and championship pressure than a regular-season finale usually gets.