As it was seemingly always going to be, Corey Heim is locked into the NASCAR Truck Series final four while everyone else will have to figuratively survive the wildest possible wild card round to challenge him there.
In the process, Heim also made history, becoming the first driver to win 10 times in the third highest level of the discipline, breaking a tie he shared very briefly with 1999’s Greg Biffle.
“A crazy year so far and for as much success we’ve had this year as an organization, we’ve actually had a lot of up and downs,” Heim said afterwards. “You’d think it’d be a pretty smooth sailing success and it has been recently but with the ups and downs we had earlier this year to come as far as we have and endure the tough races we had earlier this year and come back with a streak like we are on now is pretty awesome.”
They haven’t finished anything other than first or third over the past right races, but to his point, Friday was reflective of how not straightforward some of these have been.
Heim won the pole on Friday but was crashed in the first corner alongside outside pole sitter Layne Riggs by an aggressive Grant Enfinger. It took teammate Brent Crews more or less running out of fuel, and other teammate Toni Breidinger suffering a mechanical failure, but Heim drove away over a green-white-checkered to set the new record.
“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy,” Heim said. “You know, when I first hit the wall, I was obviously most concerned about the right front tire where I hit the barrier. Pulling off, I had all the tire smoke and it felt pretty funky right away.
“As far as the back end of the truck, I thought we were okay. I didn’t feel like we were skewed out or towed in or anything but the right front was definitely damaged when I was 90 degrees to the left of my steering.”
They pit four times under caution to get his toe back straight and the car was clearly drivable enough to get back through the field and automatically to the championship race where everyone expected them to be anyway.
The larger question is who will join Heim amongst the final four and Talladega and Martinsville is shaping up to be an absolute dogfight.
Updated Grid
Corey Heim Adv
Tyler Ankrum +2
Daniel Hemric +2
Rajah Caruth +1
–
Layne Riggs -1
Ty Majeski -2
Grant Enfinger -4
Kaden Honeycutt -4
What happened?
Based on the points above, the race to make the final four is already a dogfight in the sense that the seven remaining not locked-in championship eligible drivers are all separated by six combined points.
Kaden Honeycutt swept the first two stages, mostly as a result of a dominant Brent Crews flipping the stages to retain track position, but those 20 points proved extra valuable when he was spun from fifth by Grant Enfinger and fell to 14th as a results.
That was a nine point swing.
“Obviously, I just got wrecked,” Honeycutt said. “I knew the 41 was one back and I knew (Josh) Bilicki wouldn’t do something insanely dumb like that so that’s why I asked Lambert (Chris, spotter) who that was and that’s his one and done for me.
“He raced me extremely hard for whatever reason to start the race and wiped out the front row in Turn 1 so I’m over it.”
Riggs was over Enfinger too.
“I do not really understand what his thought process is,” Riggs said. “Like I said, people say you’re supposed to take advice from the veterans and learn from them on how to race and they race worse out of anybody.
“Except that’s twice this year that we’ve gotten wrecked by the 9 truck at Watkins Glen and here. Both two road courses, two separate incidents, two blatantly wrong on his part. So yeah, we drug a sway bar arm off after that contact. Just had a terrible handling truck the rest of the day.”
That leaves Riggs one point below the cutline and Enfinger just had to eat a lot of figurative crow. He walked over to Riggs after the race but both parties kept that between them.
“I’m embarrassed by that,” Enfinger said. “I apologize to Layne and Corey. Corey still came back and schooled all of us like he has all year, but yeah, a complete lack of judgment on my part. I was just trying to defend and get in behind Layne and I just completely screwed up, drove through Layne and dumped Corey, and just embarrassed by that.”
And Honeycutt?
“I’m not sure exactly what happened there … I got a run on Bilicki and made the move down, thought he was going to cover it, then he didn’t, I slid in and (Honeycutt) was making a run for the exit and I just clipped him and spun him out.
“It was my fault, but a 100 percent racing deal.”
Talladega looming
All told, everyone racing for the final four had a dreadful day for a variety of reasons than can just be chalked up to the randomness of the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval and now they go to the equally chaotic Talladega.
Is there even a strategy anyone can deploy when there’s more than a 50/50 chance of being wrecked in some capacity?
“Just go race,” said Daniel Hemric. “People always try to tell me the points and really, I’m a race car driver and I am just going to go try to win the race and however it shakes out, it shakes out.”
Riggs will have some help because teammate Chandler Smith has already been eliminated but has already committed to helping out at Talladega.
“Luckily we’re going to have as a teammate, so we’re going to try to work together the best we can, but obviously that’s a huge wild card too,” Riggs said. “And Martinsville is also a wild card, so yeah, I’m not really understanding this round of the Playoffs, but I thought today was going to be the least of the wild card problems. And next thing I know, I couldn’t even make a corner.
“So, just kind of do the best we can and if we get in, we get in. It’s fate and we did everything we could, but if not, we know that we were fast all year long.”
Honeycutt expects a lot of aggression.
“The problem is that everyone is up 1, up two, down two, down two, so everyone is going to go after stage points and race extremely hard to get as many points as possible,” Honeycutt said. “It’s going to be monkey see, monkey do, racing everyone else for points but we’re going to work hard and get after it.”
How does Enfinger intend to manage it?
“I don’t know that you can,” he said. “Everyone knew this race was going to be chaos and I think Talladega is the same way.”
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