Nobody has been more dominant across all of NASCAR’s top three national series than Tricon Garage’s Corey Heim.
He’s the only driver in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series to have led in every single race, totaling over 442 laps led across eight races. Despite his domination of most races, he had only two wins, one of which came after the winner was disqualified, to his name heading into Texas.
In a race that featured 10 cautions and two NASCAR overtimes, there were plenty of chances for Heim to slip up and let another one fall through his hands. While the Truck Series field and Texas weather tried their damndest to strip another win away, Heim would not be denied.
“I wasn’t letting them take that one away from me,” Heim said after the race. “I’ve given up too many this year.”
Heim faced four restarts in the last 20 laps and outdueled his competition on every single one. In the first overtime, he was beaten briefly by Rajah Caruth and Ben Rhodes until Heim split them down the middle making a three wide pass for the lead as the caution flag waved.
Other than Heim’s dominance though this race was not much to write home about. An accident filled second stage and ending combined with Texas’ lackluster passing ability and FOX’s production made this one a tough watch.
Lightning and rain in the area cancelled practice and qualifying, which gave last race’s winner Tyler Ankrum the pole. The rain also made turns one and two a danger zone, which caused many of the wrecks in the race.
Early on, Front Row Motorsports’ Layne Riggs looked to have one of the faster trucks in the field, running down Ankrum before the competition caution on lap 20. Unfortunately that was the highlight of Riggs’ day as he would be the cause of two cautions in stage two, including a trip to the infield grass that ended his day.
Speaking of the infield grass, it was like a magnet for trucks today. Reminiscent of Dale Jr. in 2014, Gio Ruggerio plowed into the grass, taking Kaden Honeycutt down with him in a hard crash.
While stage one and two were filled with incidents, stage three was mostly green flag racing. This allowed Heim to stretch his lead to five seconds over Cup series regular Carson Hocevar.
Hocevar had a mostly uneventful day, right up until the end. That changed when he was forced to pit for a new battery and fellow Tricon driver Toni Breidinger limped her way into the garage right in front of him.
This ruined Hocevar’s chances of running Heim down and after the race NASCAR called Breidinger, her crew chief and spotter to the hauler, according to Joseph Srigley.
At the end of the race, the battle behind Heim was heating up and as the challengers went three wide, they ran out of real estate. Hard hits destroyed the trucks of Stewart Friesen, Chandler Smith and Grant Enfinger and brought out the red flag.
This stacked up the field, eventually leading to the two overtimes needed to finish this one.
After a roller coaster of a day, Caruth ultimately ended with third place finish. Not to be outdone, Daniel Hemric had similar troubles, but snagged second away from Caruth.
The Craftsman Truck Series is back next weekend at Kansas next Saturday with the green flag dropping at 4:30 p.m. PST.
The Wave Around | NASCAR and Motorsports Blog 
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