Corey Heim
Ty Majeski
Tyler Ankrum
Kaden Honeycutt
And with that, the stage is set for a NASCAR Truck Series championship race that wouldn’t feel right being won by anyone other then Heim, crew chief Scott Zipadelli and the Tricon Garage No. 11 team after winning for a record setting 11th time this season.
And yet, there are three other contenders, including the one that won last year that would have no qualms in breaking the system and taking home the big trophy in less than a week.
But make no mistake, while Heim and Company have had all summer to build this truck, there is already a part of this team lamenting the very concept that they couldn’t leave with the hardware after their body of work.
11 wins
18 top-5s
20 top-10s
5.2 average finish … in 24 starts
“I think (Majeski) will be the one we have to beat for sure, but I mean, you can kind of suck all year and bring your best truck to Phoenix and you can win the whole championship,” Heim said. “It doesn’t matter how good you’ve been all year.
“Like, look at (Majeski, Joe Shear and the Thorsport No. 98), they have not been the best. I don’t think they have a win to their name this year but they are probably the truck to beat alongside us next weekend.
“It’s interesting the way it works but I am going to be looking out for him, plus the other two, because you never know what someone can bring to a one race take all.”
Heim said it in a way like he is almost resigned to it, not due to a lack of confidence in his team, but just in all the ways a small sample size can create something not reflective of their season.
His crew chief already said ‘this format literally sucks,’ and that’s kind of a prevailing narrative.
“I try not to look at it with negativity, and if you look at last year, (Christian Eckes) would have won if not for the format,” Heim said. “We had an opportunity to go to Phoenix and he finished third out of everybody and he had no business finishing third in the full season points with one of the best season averages ever.”
He is now that driver.
“At the end of the day it’s what I signed up for. This what I have to deal with as a NASCAR driver but it just promotes and rewards mediocrity in a sense that no one wants to take risks unless you have playoff points and the guys that are just good at either not getting wrecked or can just finish well in these rounds and sneak into the playoffs.”
When asked if next Friday was a chance to validate his team, Heim just would not let go of what could go wrong.
“Like we’ve won 11 races this year,” Heim said. “We’ve proven everything to this point and now all someone has to go do is go into Turn 1 and absolutely wipe you out … and that proves that they’re the best driver?
“That’s kind of my main gripe at the end of the day, and you saw it in (2023) we probably didn’t deserve to win the championship in the sense of wins but we had a really good consistent average finish and then we got wiped out.”
That was the year Carson Hocevar crashed him while leading.
“So, what does this prove? That’s my main gripe.”
Buzzer Beater
With the benefit of hindsight, Layne Riggs was actually eliminated from the Playoffs halfway through the first stage because he couldn’t get going through the gears from the front row on the restart and ultimately finished sixth in the first stage.
If he finished fifth, that’s one more point that would have seen him through to the finals. Fourth? In easily.
Instead, Riggs finished third behind Honeycutt, with them ending this round in a tie. Riggs drew even with a point for the fastest lap but Honeycutt’s best finish this round, second, was better than Riggs’ third.
And that was that.
“Battling back there at the end, we thought that we were the tiebreaker winner, and I got told that we were in, and I was still just kind of upset,” Riggs said. “I don’t like how those races finish like that. You have to do what you have to do. That’s just not my kind of mentality, I don’t like doing that …
“But I’m hearing, ‘Gotta get a spot, gotta get one,’ I’m going to do what my team tells me to do to get into this championship. Roughing guys up, I don’t really want to rough up; they have done nothing to me in the past. I don’t like how it comes down to the end like this, and how people race, especially here at Martinsville.”
It just left the second-generation racer overall dismayed with the format, especially given him three wins and two winless drivers advancing over him.
“We thought we were the tiebreaker winner. I got told that we were in and I was still upset. I just don’t like how those races finish like that. You have to do what you have to do. That’s not my kind of mentality and I don’t like doing that. Either way, we’ve had a great year all the way around.”
Riggs thought he was in even upon climbing out of the truck. Conversely, Honeycutt thought he was out until Todd Bodine congratulated him after getting out.
“All (spotter Chris) Lambert told me was to not lose a spot and fight like hell,” Honeycutt said. “I didn’t do the best job of executing the restart and Corey did an excellent job of executing. Just had to hold on and hoped that everything worked out. Thankfully it did, and now we get the chance to go have fun next week and try to mix it up.”
He was considerably emotional climbing out.
“I was just a dirt track kid from Texas and I didn’t really have any business being in NASCAR,” Honeycutt said. “Thanks to all the nights of my dad out there in the shop at 2 and 3 o’clock in the morning working on dirt cars every night and to all the people that I’ve been able to race for my career and get to this point to have the opportunity to go to Phoenix now.”
His championship run is one of the more unique in the Truck Series history because he started the season with Niece Motorsports. When he brokered a deal to join Tricon Garage next season, a Toyota team, it meant that he lost all data from Chevrolet and could not finish at Niece.
At the same time, Stewart Friesen had gotten injured in a Dirt Modified, and his Toyota team needed a driver to finish out the year. Friesen had won to advance his truck into the playoffs and found a driver who could finish the year and win a title for both.
“It’s unbelievable, man,” Honeycutt said. “I should have very easily been on the couch in July after I made my decision on what to do. And I’m so grateful to be a part of Toyota and this amazing manufacturer. To carry on this championship now, we got a 50 percent chance of winning it at least. So I’m very much looking forward to next weekend. Regardless of how everything goes, I’m just extremely thankful.”
Ty Majeski, ThorSport Racing Ford
Photo by: James Gilbert / Getty Images
Meanwhile, Majeski did not have his best night, struggling with an ill-handling car and a soft brake pedal at some point.
“Obviously, I have mixed emotions,” Majeski said. “We come to a short track and we expect to be a little bit more competitive than that, but we qualified good, got good stage points and that was the difference tonight. I knew once we got back in traffic we were in pretty big trouble. I kind of knew from when we unloaded this thing today that it wasn’t quite right, but we persevered and got good stage points. The crew guys had a hell of a pit stop and kept our track position and I was just kind of playing defense at the end. It was just good enough.”
And does he feel good about next week?
“Oh yeah.”
And then that leaves Ankrum, a seven-year veteran of the Truck Series, who is making his first ever appearance in a championship race in this division.
“To fire off the way we did the first six or seven races of the year and then to have that big slump in the middle of the summer and still get here, by just racing smarter than everyone else, that’s a huge tip of the cap to this team,” Ankrum said. “We did it quietly and safely and proud to be in the final four.”
Grant Enfinger and Daniel Hemric faced must-win odds due to how the Roval and Talladega went for them. Enfinger had about a fifth place car, but that wasn’t enough and he took tires late just to try to make something happen.
He finished 12th, as making his way through the field in a track position race was just a grind. Hemric had a radiator and oil cooler puncture during the stack-up caused by the Riggs missed shift and was not running at the finish.
Caruth denied
Rajah Caruth entered the race 14 points above the cutline, best amongst the drivers not named ‘Corey Heim’ but was eliminated following contact with Honeycutt.
The incident occurred in Turn 4 on Lap 73 and cut the left rear tire on the Spire Motorsports N0. 71, and sent Caruth into the wall.
“Just tight racing with steel bodies and stuff you can’t really rub. You’ll cut a tire,” Caruth said after being evaluated and released from the infield care center. “And as soon as it cut, it was on the rim, so I kind of was just out of control. So not anything deliberate obviously, just things happen and hate I was on the bad end of it.”
Caruth had won the race at Nashville earlier in the season, his second full-time year in Trucks, and will move up to the Xfinity Series next year in a part-time capacity with JR Motorsports.
“Definitely heartbroken, for sure,” Caruth said. “It’d be different if it was something that I did, if I messed up, but it was pretty much out of my control. Definitely a heartbreaker.”
For his part, Honeycutt was remorseful.
“I was pretty mad at myself, to be honest. I really hate that,” Honeycutt said. “I didn’t want any of that to happen. I know me and him came off the corner pretty close, and I really just need to look and see if he tracked out enough or if I just came up into him. So I’m definitely going to talk to him about that. I hate that it happened. He’s a good buddy. Thankfully, we were able to move past that and just execute all night and put ourselves in a spot to be tied to go on to Phoenix.”
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