That was Heim Time the whole dang time.
Corey Heim won for the fourth time in 11 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races this season, which is also good for 15 in 75 career starts, a staggering 20 percent win clip or basically one in every five. This one, like many of his wins, was a no-brainer and seemed likely to happen unless a misfortune struck him.
Which, to be fair, has happened a lot this year.
“I feel like we’ve had a lot of things that have taken us out of various races,” Heim said afterwards. “Most of it being circumstantial like the engine issue at Homestead or getting spun last week. It’s been a bunch of things.
“The frustration would have built up if it had been one consistent thing but it does feel like something will go inevitably wrong throughout the day but I do feel like I’ve done a good job, myself, and the team of not letting it get to us.
“We’re not running like crap. The speed is there every race. Just some weird things have happened. Four wins this early in the season is a lot to be proud and a lot more season left.”
He joked, kind of but not really, that ‘it was nice to be far enough ahead this week so I couldn’t get cleaned out,’ a reference to his conflict with Layne Riggs at North Wilkesboro.
The final margin of victory was 6.229 seconds.
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It wasn’t a battle for the lead like all four of them would have wanted but several seconds behind Heim was a tremendous battle for second with around 50 laps to go.
Busch had a ‘loose moment’ running second and proceeded to trade the spot back and forth with fellow Cup Series driver Ross Chastain. That allowed Riggs and Kaden Honeycutt to catch them both. They would race amongst themselves for the next several laps in a way that left an impression on all parties.
Busch made clear several times after the race that fifth was disappointing for ‘Truck Series Kyle Busch’ but also conceded that it was a lot of fun, too.
“It was fine, it was good,” Busch said. “The 11 was just waiting for bit before he could get going, and I couldn’t fire off with him that well, and that was probably way lower on air pressure. After about 15-18 laps, they would drive away.
Chastain simply said being a race car driver is fun, no matter the level.
“Anything I can race is fun,” Chastain said. “I’ll race a wheel barrow and have fun with it. I did race with the 11 on some of the earlier restarts and thought we executed well but just couldn’t hang on. We got it better from Homestead but it just wasn’t where we needed it to be.
“But I don’t care where we’re racing in that sometimes the race for 20th at these places is a lot of fun. It’s just less fun when you look up at the pylon and realize it’s not the for the lead.
Honeycutt and Riggs took pride in mixing it up, and holding their own, against two of the best from the highest level of the discipline.
“It was a lot of fun racing Kyle and Ross,” Honeycutt said. “Layne too. I don’t know if TV caught it but we were all ripping the fence in 1 and 2, and trying to sneak to the outside of each other in 3 and 4. That was a good race and we had a lot of fun. I hate me and Ross didn’t have an extra little bit to get (team owner) Al Niece in Victory Lane.”
This was the first top-5 of the season for Honeycutt.
“I enjoy racing with those guys,” Riggs said. “I know some people roll their eyes when Cup guys run Trucks but I like it because they teach you something every time, whether its race craft or running the top. At Homestead, Larson taught me how to run the top just by me following him all night long. I used that tonight I’ll be using that forever.
“If he hadn’t come down here and run, no one would have gotten that aggressive to do it for the win and those guys will show you all their tricks when you race them for the win. I learned a lot tonight.”
Not fun
Things were decidedly not fun for Chandler Smith and Ty Majeski, who both ended up crashed when Gio Ruggiero lost control of his Truck out of Turn 4 and triggered the multi-truck melee.
For Majeski, the defending champion, is especially frustrated because he is suffering misfortune every week. He has six finishes outside of the top-10, three sub-30 finishes and two DNFs.
“It’s the highs and lows of motorsports,” Majeski said. “You go hero to zero in four months. Super frustrating month for sure. The speed was there. I’m not saying we would have fun but we got to fifth on that one run and kind of ran down the pack of four for the lead. We didn’t have the balance when we needed it later in the run.
“Joe (Shear Jr., crew chief) was going to take one more swing at it after stage 2, and again, I think we could have flirted with a top-5 but instead it was another 30th place finish so super frustrating. My guys never gave up and we’ve got some good tracks coming for us, New Hampshire, Bristol, just got to keep our head down.”
So what happened?
“I heard (Ruggiero) just got off 4 and either got loose or came down into (Smith) and collected us both. Racing three-wide here, this place is just really narrow. The air does a lot of different things when you’re in the pack like that. Gio is obviously a rookie and he hasn’t experienced all of the situations you can be in yet so just a racing deal – wrong place and wrong time.”
Ruggiero, who opened the day with a pole, agreed and was apologetic.
“I had speed at the start of the race and just fell behind a bit, got put in a bad spot in dirty air, middle of three-wide and got free,” Ruggiero said. “ I think (Smith) might have slipped a little bit and came back down as I slid up.
“Just incidental contact there. Super unfortunate and really sorry that happened but proud of all my guys for keeping their heads up and we’ll be strong for the next one.”
Results
- Corey Heim
- Ross Chastain (i)
- Kaden Honeycutt
- Layne Riggs
- Kyle Busch (i)
- Grant Enfinger
- Matt Mills
- Daniel Hemric
- Rajah Caruth
- Brandon Jones (i)
- Jake Garcia
- Tyler Ankrum
- Stewart Friesen
- Parker Kligerman
- BJ McLeod
- Andres Perez de Lara #
- Ben Rhodes
- Luke Fenhaus
- Timmy Hill
- Matt Crafton
- Gio Ruggiero #
- Stefan Parsons
- Connor Mosack #
- Spencer Boyd
- Jack Wood
- Tanner Gray
- Frankie Muniz #
- Mason Maggio (i)
- Cody Dennison
- Toni Breidinger #
- Dawson Sutton #
- Ty Majeski
- Justin Carroll
- Chandler Smith
