Corey Heim has already proven there’s no track type that fazes him in the Truck Series. He’s won at short tracks, intermediates, and superspeedways. And at Watkins Glen, he won on a road course for the second time this season and scored his sixth win of the year overall.
Heim has now won on a road course four times in his career, and each time he’s done it in dominating fashion, leading the most laps en route to victory. Friday’s win at The Glen was no different, with Heim leading a race-high 44 of 81 laps, but that didn’t make it in any way uneventful.
Heim had to defeat two opponents as the race wound down in the final stage.
The first was Christopher Bell. The Cup Series regular grabbed the lead by staying out when nearly every other driver pitted at the Stage 2 break, and he held onto the lead right up to the regulation finish of the race. Unfortunately for Bell, a cycle of late cautions and restarts plunged the race into Overtime, and he was forced to pit ahead of the second Overtime attempt.
The second was Daniel Hemric. Heim had missed the bus stop chicane midway through the final stage and had to serve a stop-and-go penalty, plunging him to ninth with under 15 laps to go, but he’d fought back up to second by the first Overtime restart and was handed the lead when Bell pitted. That left him with just Hemric, the driver directly behind him, to deal with for two restarts.
On the third and final of those restarts, Hemric got to his inside in Turn 1 in the first lap and then to his bumper in the esses after Heim got loose in the second lap, but Heim ultimately held him off both times and went on to take the win.
“Yeah, that we just never give up,” Heim described the approach that led him to victory lane. “I got behind in that last stage. I was scratching and clawing trying to get back through the field.”
He explained that his Truck was not in tip-top shape in that final lap battle with Hemric, who had a smoking truck of his own, as a result of the climb through the field following his stop-and-go.
“I had my brakes pretty much go out on me on that long green flag. I was beating them up trying get back through the field,” Heim explained. “Blew the bus stop, made a lot of mistakes myself. I feel like we’ve had a lot of them get away from us this year with cautions or part failures, but we finally had one go our way, and we had some opportunities to finish it off, and a couple more at end for good measure.
“Huge thank you to TRICON Garage. This Mobil 1 Tundra was phenomenal. Thank you to Toyota – just everyone that is a part of this. [driver coaches] Trevor [Bayne] and Blake [Koch] – they do a phenomenal job with my development. Just so many people to thank, so many people to keep impressing throughout the season. This helps us with the championship and that is our goal this year.”
It certainly helps with the regular season championship. With just one race to go before the Playoff field is set, Heim has an unbeatable 178-point lead in the regular season points. That still confers a title and a trophy, and it adds some valuable additional Playoff points to help in the fight for the overall championship.
Behind Heim, Daniel Hemric came home second by just 0.202 seconds. They were followed by Gio Ruggiero in third, Christopher Bell in fourth, and Tyler Ankrum in fifth to round out the top five.
Both Bell and Ankrum had to pit after the first Overtime for extra fuel after gambling to stay out in the Stage 2 caution, and both were able to drive back up through the two subsequent Overtime restarts for a top-five finish.
“It stumbled, so we were out of fuel. So, I pitted – yeah, surprised of how we were able to get our Toyota back through there. I was like – one more restart, one more restart…” Bell said.
“I thought it was awesome to see how good the stuff was,” he described of his Halmar-Friesen Racing machine. “I was asking [crewchief] Jimmy [Villeneuve] and [owner] Stewart [Friesen] – asking them what they thought the potential was coming here, and they were like, I think we will run top-five or so. It was good. The 11 [of Heim] was really strong. I felt like we were right there with him, so I was happy with it,” Bell assessed.
Sammy Smith, Ty Majeski, Connor Zilisch, Matt Mills, and Layne Riggs all earned a top-ten finish.
The race featured nine caution flags for 26 laps, with six of those coming after the conclusion of Stage 2 to contribute to the repeated Overtime run at the end.
If the race had gone on for just a few minutes more, it would have passed the pre-determined mark for darkness when NASCAR would have had to call the race since the track does not have lights.
The Truck Series returns for the final race of the regular season at Richmond Raceway on Friday, August 15th.
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