Saturday afternoon’s Team EJP 175 (12 p.m. ET on FS1, NRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at New Hampshire Motor Speedway marks the first elimination race of the 2025 NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series Playoffs in the series’ first visit to the New England one-miler since 2017.

TRICON Garage’s Corey Heim and Front Row Motorsports’ Layne Riggs have each already advanced with wins in the previous two rounds while ThorSport Racing’s Jake Garcia is 14 points behind Spire Motorsports’ Rajah Caruth for the eighth and final Playoff position. Rigg’s FRM teammate Chandler Smith is 24 points below the cutoff.

No current Playoff driver has ever won previously at New Hampshire and among the field of 10, only Daniel Hemric and Grant Enfinger – third and fifth respectively in the Playoff standings – have raced trucks there before. NASCAR Cup Series driver Christopher Bell won the last Truck Series race at New Hampshire in 2017.

While Heim has turned in a record-setting season – leading the points standings for the last 16 weeks – New Hampshire presents a new opportunity for the field as one of six “new” tracks on the schedule this year.

Hitting on the right set-up has proven to be key – nine of the last 10 New Hampshire Truck Series races have been won by the driver who leads the most laps. And the last 10 race winners have all started from the first row of the grid.

Not only will the race determine who moves on to challenge for the season title, it could be the scene of historic achievement. A victory Saturday afternoon for Heim would be his ninth – an all-time record tying former series champion Greg Biffle’s work in 1999. Heim is 219 laps away from taking the all-time single season laps-led record set nearly 30 years ago by former champion Mike Skinner (1996).

Practice followed by Kennametal Pole Qualifying is Friday at 4 p.m. ET (FS2).

TIL NEXT TIME, I AM STILL WORKING ON MY REDNECK!