HAMPTON, Ga. — In his first NASCAR Xfinity Series start at his home track, Corey Heim chose going for the win over helping his manufacturer on Saturday evening (Sept. 7).
The Sam Hunt Racing Toyota driver did not get behind fellow Toyota driver Chandler Smith coming to the white flag of the Focused Health 250 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. When Smith went under leader Austin Hill, Heim followed Hill’s Chevrolet instead, shuffling Smith to the back of the top five.
“It was in my best interest to try to stay high,” Heim said. “We didn’t have a ton of raw speed today, but we had a ton of handling. So I wanted to try to get to the top of the No. 21, and we did.”
Entering turn 1 of the last lap, Heim went to Hill’s outside, but the No. 21 squeezed Heim into the outside wall. Hill won the race, Smith finished fourth and Heim got fifth, with three Georgia drivers in the top five.
“He [Hill] just kind of ran me out of room, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t have done the exact same thing if I was in his spot,” Heim said. “Just part of this superspeedway racing. You have to be aggressive and take advantage of your opportunities. Put ourselves in a really good spot there, just wasn’t meant to be.”
Smith was devastated by how the closing laps played out.
“I’m kind of speechless, honestly,” Smith said. “There are a lot of different things that I could have done. I could have been more selfish when I got cleared and went to the bottom and covered that and controlled the race for sure.
“But I was trying to be a good teammate, and that didn’t pay for me today, as usual.”
Heim’s decision to go for the win himself instead of helping a manufacturer teammate comes on the heels of Chevy driver Parker Retzlaff facing criticism after pushing the Ford of Harrison Burton to win the NASCAR Cup Series race at Daytona International Speedway instead of the Chevy of Kyle Busch.
When NBC Sports asked Heim if he was worried about repercussions from Toyota, he said, “I’ll have a discussion about when to make the move maybe, but that’s about it.”
“The move was going to be made on a straightaway, not the middle of the corner,” Heim told NBC. “So if he [Smith] wanted me to push him by, I feel like if he just would’ve dropped back to my bumper out of [turn] 4 on…
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