Corey Heim eschewed any doubt as to who the best driver in the field was in Saturday’s Truck Series race at Lime Rock Park, the first ever at the 1.478-mile Connecticut road course.
In a stacked field including ringers who have won in the IMSA prototype class and Australian Supercars, Heim led 99 laps after starting from the pole, claimed both stage wins, and earned the fastest lap.
The only thing that kept Heim from a completely perfect race was Layne Riggs beating him to the line on the first lap on a restart from the only natural caution of the race with five laps to go, but Riggs promptly overdrove the first corner and Heim got around, never looking back from there.
Proving Heim’s road course abilities in the series, this win is his third in a row on road courses after winning the two previous times the series visited the track type last year. That is the first time in Truck Series history a driver has managed to win three road courses in a row.
“Yeah, that was nothing short of incredible,” Heim admitted. “These road courses—I really look forward to them, pre-event and whatnot, and I really prepare for them. So to see all that pay off with Safelite, TRICON, Toyota, it’s super special.
“Obviously, the truck was so good today. I can’t complain one bit about that. A flawless day and we will take that and move forward and try and collect some wins that we should have had this year,” he concluded.
Apart from the record-setting statistic at road courses, the win is Heim’s fifth on the season, 15 races in. His closest competitor, Chandler Smith, only has two wins at that point and no other full-time driver has more than one.
Ty Majeski ended up second, benefitting from a check-up in the field when Riggs overran the first corner on the second lap after the final restart. Gio Ruggiero, who ended up third for his second-best finish this year in his rookie season, explained the incident.
“That last restart there – I got to pick the bottom, I was pretty happy about that because I knew that they were going to do something crazy going into [turn] one, and obviously everyone got in the grass going down the frontstretch, and it is hard to slow down when you are in the grass, so I think they just got in there too deep and all tried to win with five to go. Everyone just washed up the track, and I just stayed out of the mess, and got to third,” he described.
“Everyone just washed up the track, and I just stayed out of the mess, and got to third. I think I had a good enough truck and good speed to hang with the 98 [of Ty Majeski] for the last three or four laps but couldn’t really catch them. Was struggling being a little bit tight. Learned a ton, and ready to go get them at the next one.”
Ben Rhodes finished fourth and Australian Supercars driver Cam Waters rounded out the top five, his first top-fifteen finish in his third-ever Truck Series start and first on a road course.
Chandler Smith, Josh Bilicki, Brent Crews, Daniel Hemric, and Tyler Ankrum rounded out the top-ten positions respectively. Riggs, who did manage to lead a lap over Heim, fell back as far as 12th after overrunning the first corner on the late restart.
One notable absence from that list is road course ringer Jordan Taylor. The IMSA prototype driver was brought in by Spire Motorsports for this race and proved his worth by running in the top five most of the day and finishing third in both stages. However, in the chaos of the final restart, Taylor ended up spinning from the top five, collecting a few other trucks, and could ultimately only recover for a 20th-place finish.
That late caution, which proved decisive for many drivers and cost Heim his perfect race, was the only caution except for the scheduled stage breaks. The race was uneventful for the most part, with equally few wrecks and few passes around the narrow and flowing old road course. That changed with 11 laps to go when Matt Mills ran off track and could not get going, forcing NASCAR to throw the yellow.
The race featured controlled red-flag pit stop conditions, being a road course race away from where Atlanta the Cup and Xfinity Series were racing, so as to keep the teams from having to get additional competitive pit crew members beyond those shared with the other series. That helped Hiem avoid any race off pit road or pit strategy decisions that might have forced him to give up the lead for later track position.
The Truck Series returns at a short track at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park (IRP) on Friday, July 25th.
- SVG Has a Shot at Three as NASCAR Heads to Sonoma - July 10, 2025
- SVG Punts the Rugby Ball in Chicago; Zilisch Feels Like He Got Punted - July 5, 2025
- NASCAR Heads to Chicago for a Third Time, and Potentially the Last - July 3, 2025