If Corey Heim doesn’t walk away as the 2025 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series champion Friday night, it might border on criminal. He’s spent the year bulldozing the field — 11 wins, six of them in the last seven races — and last week at Martinsville, he didn’t so much win as put on a public demonstration of dominance. His first victory came in the season opener at Daytona, so it would only be fitting if his last comes under the lights in Phoenix.
But this is NASCAR — a sport where fate likes to toss a wrench into perfection. One bad pit stop, one blown engine, or one stray truck in the wrong place can turn a victory parade into a very expensive therapy session. There are no do-overs here. This is the final race of the season. Win, or wonder forever.
When asked about keeping his head straight heading into Phoenix, Heim sounded less like a man chasing a crown and more like one maintaining a routine.
“We’ve done a good job as a race team being in the right headspace,” Heim said. “I don’t think we’ve had a lot of highs and lows this year. We’ve been very even-keeled and just carried momentum through the entire season. Doing what we’ve been doing is going to be really important — maybe with a slightly bigger push, considering it’s a championship race. But our mental approach has worked, so we’re just going to continue to do that.”
In other words, he’s not planning to change a thing. But across the garage sits the man who knows what it feels like to win here — and who’d love nothing more than to spoil Heim’s perfect ending.
Ty Majeski rolls into Phoenix as the defending race winner and the reigning Truck Series champion, and he’s got that calm, dangerous confidence of someone who’s already climbed the mountain.
“It feels great, honestly,” Majeski said. “I think there’s some pressure to get that first one… but I’m hungry for another and I feel good — very calm. I feel a lot less pressure than last year for that reason, so I’m ready to go.”
He’s also quietly confident that his No. 98 Ford can back it up. “The places we’ve been good at in the past, we’ve been good this season,” he said. “We were very dominant at Richmond, which is probably the closest to this racetrack. If we can replicate what we did last year, we’re gonna be really tough Friday night.”
Still, Majeski knows Heim’s record-setting run has cast a long shadow. “He’s overshadowed everybody,” Majeski admitted. “When you win 11 races, you overshadow the entire series. But we’re here in Phoenix — and none of that matters now. I think we’ve got him right where we want him. I don’t think he wanted to race us this weekend, and here we are with another shot at it.”
If Majeski can pull it off, he knows exactly what the internet will do. “Social media would just explode, and I’m here for all of it,” he said with a grin. “I love stirring the pot a little bit, and I’d love to be the guy that did that.”
So Friday night, under the desert lights, it’s one man’s dream season versus another man’s chance to wreck it.
If Heim wins, it seals one of the most dominant Truck Series campaigns in NASCAR history. If Majeski steals it — well, that would be the kind of chaos fans will talk about long after the fireworks fade.
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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