If 2024 was a dream for Spire’s rising star Rajah Caruth, winning his first race and finishing seventh in points, 2025 was looking to be a nightmare.

With three finishes outside the top 20 in the first four races, the Washington D.C. native struggled to find much speed. But that didn’t faze him. After Homestead, he rattled off five straight top 10s to get his team back on track. 

Tonight was the culmination of the team’s work, which required near perfection from Caruth and his pit crew to seal the deal. The pit crew did their part at the end of stages two and three, giving Caruth the lead.

While Caruth couldn’t hold back Truck Series star Corey Heim in stage two, stage three proved to be a different story. Learning from his mistakes, as he’s done all season, Caruth beat Heim off the restart for a lead he would never relinquish.

“They won the race for us,” Caruth said, pointing to his pit crew during his front stretch interview. 

It’s true that Caruth never gave up the lead, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a flair for the dramatic. As the laps wound down in a caution-free last stage, Heim slowly reeled Caruth in and was within eight-tenths of a second with 20 to go.

As Caruth battled lapped traffic and Heim searched high and low, another challenger entered the ring. Layne Riggs, who won stage one and had the fastest truck of the race, had battled back from two slow pit stops to find himself in contention yet again.

Caruth’s lead dwindled as did the laps, with Heim finding success in the middle lane of turns one and two while Caruth’s car bested him on the bottom in turns three and four. With under 10 to go, Heim had caught him, and it looked like the Toyota star was going to take another step toward history.

As Heim shipped his car off into turn one using the middle, Caruth slid up to aero block, forcing Heim out of the gas and into the clutching hands of the rival Riggs. Riggs couldn’t complete his pass on the fading Heim, and the #11 truck set his sights on the leader yet again.

While pace was on Heim’s side, time was not. The short battle with Riggs cost him too much, and all Caurth had to do was hold on for three more laps. 

With the series’ two best trucks squarely behind him, Caurth cruised to the finish line, claiming his first win of the season and punching his ticket to the playoffs.

Spire’s stellar day doesn’t end with Caruth. Dirt racing stud Corey Day had his best race of the season by far, finishing fifth in just his 20th ever race on pavement.

The Rackley Roofing 200 was an incredibly clean race with only one caution for incident, when Jack Wood took himself for a spin after getting tight behind Kyle Busch. The other caution for debris, saw NASCAR cleaning up oil that gushed out of the back of Frankie Muniz’s truck, continuing his abysmal year. 

Speaking of Busch, he was the lone Spire entry that lacked much of any pace. After a black flag for a restart violation, the two-time Cup Series champion ran mid-pack for most of the night.

While Heim didn’t take another step toward history in the wins column, he did set a new record. Heim became the first driver in the Truck Series’ history to lead 800 laps in 12 races, according to NASCAR Insights.

Heim’s 810 laps led with 13 races remaining sets him on pace to break the laps led record in the series at 1,533.

The Craftsman Truck Series returns to action at another 1.5-mile track at Michigan Speedway, for the first time since 2020, next Saturday at 5:00 p.m. PST.