By Kirby Arnold, Special Contributor
AVONDALE, Ariz. — Corey Heim knew he would need to drive a near-perfect race to snag the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship Friday night at Phoenix Raceway.
In the end, even that wasn’t enough to beat Ty Majeski, who dominated from the start to win the race and capture his first series championship. Majeski led 132 of the 150 laps and controlled the final 26 laps after a late caution flag.
Heim, clearly the best of the rest and the only real challenger to Majeski, led twice for 16 laps in his TRICON Garage Toyota but was penalized for pulling out of line on a mid-race restart.
“I’m really disappointed to come up short like that,” Heim said. “I did almost everything right except for the restart violation.”
Heim was in line approaching the green flag on lap 98 when he saw the truck ahead of him, driven by Layne Riggs, pull below the inside yellow line. Riggs faded back up the track before the start-finish line but Heim didn’t, and the resulting penalty pushed him deep in the pack of 35 trucks.
“It was just an instinctual reaction for me to go for it,” Heim said. “I thought I saw the 38 pulling down toward the apron. I was pretty surprised (at the penalty) at first because I had no idea I had done anything wrong.”
Ultimately, the penalty was a mere hiccup that Heim overcame.
He made a spectacular drive back into the top five, then ran second behind Majeski when the race restarted on lap 124 after the last of six caution flags. By then, he knew he wouldn’t have enough to challenge Majeski, who won by 3.945 seconds.
“They were unbelievably lights out the whole race,” Heim said of Majeski and his ThorSport Racing team, which won its sixth NASCAR Truck Series championship.
“I was able to take the lead from him at one point and race him super hard, but they were lights out. They were probably 2/10 (of a second) better than me every lap. And we were probably 2/10 better than the guys behind us. There was nothing I could have done.”
Despite the disappointment of being so close to the championship, Heim remained positive about his successful season. The 22-year-old won a series-best six victories this year after he finished fourth in the series in 2023.
“We put together some really incredible races this year,” Heim said. “There’s nothing to hang our heads about right now. To be a race car driver and have a…
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