The Championship 4 in any NASCAR national series is just that: four drivers with a chance at the title in the season finale.
Ty Majeski didn’t get that memo. At Phoenix Raceway on Nov. 8, he led a staggering 132 of the 150 laps to win the race and the 2024 championship.
Majeski held off occasional challenges from title foe Corey Heim, but in the end, neither Heim nor fellow Championship 4 contenders Christian Eckes and Grant Enfinger could hold a candle to Majeski’s No. 98 for ThorSport Racing.
Heim, Eckes, Nick Sanchez and Enfinger followed to close out the top five, putting the entire Championship 4 in the top five in the season finale.
Taylor Gray, Kaden Honeycutt, Connor Mosack, Ben Rhodes and Layne Riggs rounded out the top 10.
After starting from the pole, Majeski was lights out off the bat, leading the first 39 laps before fellow championship contender Heim was able to catch him once Majeski’s No. 98 became tight and caught in lapped traffic.
But with four laps to go, Heim nearly got into the spinning truck of Frankie Muniz off the nose of William Sawalich, swerving at the last minute to avoid the No. 27. Heim was awarded the stage-one win as part of the early caution, followed by Majeski, Eckes, Sanchez and Enfinger.
Majeski regained the lead after between-stages pit stops, leading under green-flag conditions until Jack Wood, pulling double duty after also competing in the ARCA Menards Series West finale earlier in the day, backed his truck into the outside wall on lap 59, ending his day and bringing out the caution.
The restart gave Heim the chance to launch back to the lead on lap 65, but Majeski took it back a short time later, hanging out through the end of stage two, followed by Heim, Riggs, Sanchez and Eckes.
On the stage-three restart, Mosack slid into the outside wall on the backstretch, bouncing back into the field and triggering a multi-truck wreck that collected Tyler Ankrum, Muniz, Stefan Parsons, Thad Moffitt, Sawalich, Andres Perez and Spencer Boyd. Heim was also dinged for a restart violation for going too low before crossing the start/finish line, sending him to the back of the field on the ensuing restart. The red flag was displayed during cleanup with 47 to go.
A few laps later, Conner Jones spun to bunch the field back up; Heim had moved up to 10th with 39 to go. Enfinger and Eckes were among those who pitted via a strategy play to combat the dominance of Majeski, scoring fresher tires…
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