Corey Heim Comes 1 Spot Short of Charlotte Comeback, Later DQ’d

Concord, N.C. – After leading a race-high 72 of the 134 laps, Corey Heim didn’t take home the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series trophy at Charlotte Motor Speedway. To add insult to injury Friday (May 24) night, he didn’t even finish in second, his position when he crossed the finish line. Nope, Heim was disqualified post-race due to three lug nuts not secure, thereby resulting in a last-place (36Th) finish.

Heim appeared headed to victory lane before the final caution flag flew on lap 121. During the pit stop, his TRICON Garage pit crew had issues with the air wrench, and he only recovered – until the DQ – to second, 0.507 seconds behind victor Nick Sanchez.

“Track position,” Heim told media post-race prior to his DQ. “Feel like it’s, I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but it’s not terribly difficult to drive up to second when you’re a victim of the leader and what he does, it’s really tough to control your own destiny when Nick did a really great job of blocking off my air and holding his track position.

“I mean, it’s a lot easier when the tires are pumped up at the end. Everyone’s going full throttle. I feel like that got away from us for sure. We had the track position from the very start. I feel like if we had clean air, we would’ve been, you know, long gone but that’s racing.”

After leading the most laps and winning both stages – both subsequently negated after his DQ – the result stung for Heim in a similar fashion to his Las Vegas Motor Speedway finish earlier this season. In that one, he started 25th, collected 15 stage points and led 18 laps but was unable to win there too.

“I mean, Vegas got away from us the same way,” he noted. “I feel like we were the leader on the green flag run; didn’t come out on the good end of it.

“Track position is everything, right? Vegas got away from us cause we lost track position and so did this one. It just stings. I feel like we’ve been so good on the intermediates this year, we’ve been deserving to win every bit of it and close out one of ’em. This one for sure.”

Yet a 36th-place showing leaves him with one point and more lost ground to points leader Christian Eckes with only five races left in the regular season.