There’s unbelievable, and then there’s what unfolded Friday afternoon at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the NASCAR Truck Series.
Seventeen-year-old Brent Crews had it all lined up — a calm, Hollywood-style finish, his first win in just his eighth NASCAR start. But this is NASCAR. Calm endings are a myth, and chaos is as natural as sunrise. And most of that chaos came from one place: Tricon Garage.
Tricon’s leading driver Corey Heim was enjoying the perfect day — fastest in practice, on the pole, leading comfortably in the Trucks’ first crack at Charlotte’s ROVAL. Then the green flag dropped, and it all went sideways. Heim led Layne Riggs into Turn 1 until Grant Enfinger, starting third, braked about as late as a guy realizing the off-ramp was three exits back. He punted Riggs, Riggs punted Heim, and suddenly the three of them were pirouetting like a NASCAR ballet troupe. No caution, but two championship favorites looked like they’d been through 15 rounds in a cage fight.
“Once the right front was buried in the fence, I thought we were pretty much done,” Heim said. “It is honestly pretty wild that we didn’t have any completely break from that incident and have to roll around half the pace all day. It certainly wasn’t as good as it was in practice.”
That left the spotlight on Crews, another Tricon driver, who grabbed the lead while Giovanni Ruggiero (yes, another Tricon truck) and Connor Zilisch squabbled behind him. They fought until pit strategy shuffled the order, handing the Stage 1 win to playoff hopeful Kaden Honeycutt. Heim, battered but not beaten, clawed back to seventh.
By Stage 2, Heim was charging again, proving that even a bashed-up Toyota can still bite. Enfinger clung to the top 10, Riggs limped around with busted suspension, and Honeycutt doubled down by sweeping the stages. Heim, again ducking to pit lane before the end, quietly kept himself in range.
The final stage belonged to Crews, Zilisch, and Heim, who broke away like they were racing on a different track entirely. On lap 49, Heim bullied his way past Zilisch into second, and with Crews two seconds up the road, the script looked written.
But Tricon wasn’t done writing. One lap before the white flag, Toni Breidinger — driving, of course, for Tricon — ran out of gas and stalled. NASCAR, generous with yellows all day, had no choice but to throw another. Cue overtime.
Fuel suddenly became the lottery ticket. Crews had already reported his engine coughing, so when pit road opened, he dove in. Heim, rolling the dice like a Vegas high-roller, stayed out.
On the restart, Heim blasted clear while behind him the field disintegrated. Riggs, praying for a miracle, instead lost his clutch and sank like a stone. Crews, fueled and furious, sliced through the chaos, but it was too late. Heim took the white flag and never looked back, claiming his 10th win of the season — breaking Greg Biffle’s 1999 record.
“I’m so thankful for this Tricon group and their resilience – to be able to make my steering wheel from 90 degrees left down the straightaways, all towed out and messed up, to a competitive truck there in the end, it is pretty incredible to say the least,” Heim said. “To have all the success we’ve had this year, it just shows I’m working with the best group in the garage.”
For the young Crews, who is racing part-time for the team, he tried to look for the positives of day that saw him lead a race high 55 laps only to finish in the runner-up spot.
“I can take a lot away from today,” Crews said. “Just want to thank the good Lord above for keeping me safe. This has been a really fun week working with Trevor (Bayne, competition mentor) and Blake (Koch, competition mentor) at home – working on my craft. Getting better and better every day. We had a really fast JBL Toyota Tundra today. Just grateful to keep running races and keep learning more and more.”
Ruggiero — yes, that other Tricon entry — finished third, giving the team its first-ever 1-2-3 sweep. Rajah Caruth and Zilisch rounded out the top five. Riggs, furious and broken, ended his night in 21st as the lowest-finishing playoff driver.
The Trucks now get a week off before Talladega, where chaos isn’t just common — it’s practically on the menu.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
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