On the night of Toyota’s 500th start in the Craftsman Truck Series, it appeared as if their burgeoning star driver was poised to claim his third victory in just five races.

Corey Heim was cruising after dominating both of the first two stages, claiming the green and white checkered in both. Heim, who started on the pole, led by a second just six laps into the 200-lap event.

While Heim went on to lead a staggering 149 laps total at Martinsville, holding off charge after charge on what felt like constant restarts. However, this wasn’t meant to be Heim’s day. With 34 laps to go, the #11 made contact with Kayden Honeycutt causing a tire to go down and spin from the lead.

Honeycutt assumed the lead following Heim’s spin and was immediately forced to defend his lead on two restarts in eight laps. As Honeycutt held off Tyler Ankrum, Ty Majeski was waiting to pounce on the new leader.

After sneaking by Ankrum, Majeski was in prime position to claim his first win of the season. Majeski quickly caught the leader and as he got the bottom to make the pass Honeycutt swung into the corner a little too hot, cleaning out both of the potential winners with 14 laps to go.

Left in contention was Jake Garcia on the outside and McAnally-Hilgemann Racing teammates, Daniel Hemric and Ankrum, on the inside. As Ankrum took the green flag, Garcia faltered on the restart leaving the two teammates to battle it out with the laps dwindling away.

The two teammates jockeyed back and forth for the lead, with Hemric on the bottom and Ankrum hanging tough on the top side. However, if you know Martinsville you know how this ends as Hemric’s bottom lane eventually prevailed with two laps to go.

Hemric scampered off into the distance, escaping the clutches of his teammate and claiming his first Truck Series win of his career. This win comes over 12 years after Hemric’s first start in the Truck Series.

Hemric’s win completes a three-peat for MHR and the #19 truck at Martinsville, after Christian Eckes swept the track last season for the Roseville, California based team.

The racing in the Truck Series has been scarily clean to start the 2025 season, and while this race continued the series’ streak of a non-overtime finish, it also featured 10 cautions, with eight for incidents.

Majority of these incidents came in stage three, shaking up the running order and finishing order. Despite dominating most of the race, Heim only has a sixth place finish to show for it.

Similarly, Majeski ended the day 13th after riding up front for the majority of the race and Honeycutt finished two laps down in 26th.

Garcia was the beneficiary of the chaos bringing home a third place finish, which is his best finish since he was a part of MHR and finished second at Phoenix in 2023. It’s his first top-five finish since taking over the ThorSport #13 truck last season.

Rajah Caruth was one of the only drivers to take the lead away from Heim, albeit off of pit strategy and not for too long, and finally seems to be finding himself again. Placing eighth, it’s the second top-10 in three weeks for him.

The Craftsman Truck Series will take a weekend off before returning for more short track racing at Bristol Motor Speedway on April 11 at 4:30 p.m. PST.

Takeaways:

Jack: Last week I dedicated much of my takeaway space to preaching the gospel of Heim and so in an effort to not do that again this week, I want to talk about MHR. Seeing a team from just outside Sacramento, where I live, is so fun and I wish they had more of a presence in the town.

For a city that celebrates their sports teams well, despite a lack of historic success, having a successful race team currently reviving a driver’s career should be a dream come true. I would love to see the team advertise more around town and show off their success in an effort to build more West Coast race fans.

Okay, enough about MHR, this kid Heim is the truth and he’s been my favorite part of this season so far. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t won every race this year, but to watch him wheel that #11 around Homestead and dominate Martinsville the next is what stock car racing is about. I’m looking forward to seeing if he can do it at my favorite track of all time, Bristol, next week.

Cam: What a brutal ending for Tricon and the 11 team. Heim is TRD’s stud and it shows every week, but yet another win of his was stolen away by things largely out of his control. He’ll eventually fit right in at 23XI who seems to be the receiver of bad luck many times in the Cup series.

What a win for Sacramento’s MHR, which I know juiced Jack up. The team’s west coast roots are felt and they definitely should advertise more in the region. I remember during my time in the valley, I was on my way home from Texas Roadhouse on the five and I slowly noticed a white blue and yellow race car creep in my peripheral, it was the #19 ARCA west car for MHR. It was so cool to see the car on the freeway like that and it fired me up. I love to see the success for them and hope to see more.

Hemric secures a much needed win for himself as a driver. The 2022 Xfinity Series champion is largely forgotten about as a whole, but there was a time not long ago he was a Cup driver …albeit not a good one but hey! This is a big step for the former RCR driver.