TRUCKS: Ankrum Steals 1st Win in Six Years With Rockingham Fuel Gamble

Jonathan McCoy | TobyChristie.com

The long dry spell is over for Tyler Ankrum as 130 straight races of frustration culminated in a second career win in Friday's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Black's Tire 200 at Rockingham Speedway.

The California native spoke about the emotions of snapping the long winless drought in his post-race press conference.

"I haven't really figured out exactly how to pontificate what I'm feeling, but I mean, it's hard, man. After a little while, you think that you can't do it anymore, and after a little while, you start to give up on yourself," Ankrum explained. "That's the easy part to go through that, to have that many years to not win when growing up you're pretty much winning every other week, or once a month, or whatever you want to call it. Growing up, you were told you were the man. Growing up, you were told the train was never going to stop."

Ankrum continued, "To win like we always had, and to continue it into a truck, and it all just dries up right away. You don't even feel like you got started. It's hard. It's really hard, man."

On Friday night, Ankrum's persistence was rewarded with another trip to victory lane.

He didn't have the dominant truck in the race, and Ankrum had to rebound from a lap down early in the race, but once he received the free pass on Lap 92 to regain his position on the lead lap, Ankrum had a magical end to the race.

Mark Hillman made a strategy call from atop the pit box, which allowed Ankrum to attempt to make it to the finish on fuel. After some opportune cautions late in the race, Ankrum was put in a position to pull it off.

As the tanks ran dry for others including Chandler Smith, and the race's dominant driver Layne Riggs, Ankrum, who was expected to be five laps shy on fuel, was able to stretch the fuel load to the finish to pick up the race win.

"You have to try to achieve perfection. Did we have it today? No, we stole one today. But I'm a lot more happy to steal one than to go run third again, I'll tell you that," Ankrum stated.

Jake Garcia, who took his first career Truck Series pole position earlier in the day and led 43 laps, would record a career-best runner-up finish in Friday's race. Garcia crossed the finish line 6.657 seconds behind Ankrum, the race winner.

Daniel Hemric continued his solid start to the 2025 season as he finished third, a few weeks removed from his first career win, which came at Martinsville Speedway. Including the win, Hemric has now recorded three top-five finishes and four top-10s through the opening seven races of the campaign.

Rajah Caruth took home a fourth-place finish in the No. 71 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet Silverado, and Grant Enfinger crossed the finish line right behind him in fifth.

Kaden Honeycutt, Jack Wood, Corey Heim (race-high 52 laps led), Connor Mosack, and Gio Ruggiero rounded out the top-10 finishers in Friday's race, which marked the first NASCAR National Series event at Rockingham Speedway since the 2013 season.

Layne Riggs led the race twice for a total of 24 laps, and picked up the Stage 1 and Stage 2 win. But with five laps to go, he had to bring his No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford F-150 to pit road for additional fuel.

A few laps later, Riggs' teammate Chandler Smith, who won last weekend's race at Bristol Motor Speedway, saw his fuel tank run dry as well. Smith would coast around the track, and would sputter to a 13th-place finish.