Corey Heim Parlays Seven-Wide Move Into Truck Series Championship
The one knock on Corey Heim coming into Friday night's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway is that he hadn't scored a series championship. And in the closing laps of the race, it looked like the overwhelming favorite to win the title would once again let it slip from his grasp as he dropped to 10th place on a pit stop during a late-race caution.
However, Heim made an incredible move, where he hugged the inside wall as the field went seven-wide in Turn 1. Heim was able to rocket from the 10th position to second place as a slew of trucks crashed behind him to send the race into overtime.
CAUTION IS OUT. We'll have another restart. Majeski leads Heim and Honeycutt.
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) November 1, 2025
(Also ... WHAT A MOVE BY HEIM 👀) pic.twitter.com/9MC0KHzu6D
In overtime, Heim, who had four fresh tires to Ty Majeski's two fresh tires, had the advantage. He would take the lead from Majeski on the inside line on the restart, and Heim would power away to score the race win, and with it his first career NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship.
"Yeah, I don't care if I was on hundred-lap tires, nobody was going to beat me tonight," Heim exclaimed in his post-race victory interview. "It wasn't going to happen. We struggled all weekend in practice a little bit. In qualifying we missed it a little bit. You can always trust [crew chief] Scott [Zipadelli] up on the box to do everything he can to put me in position to win the race. That's what he did. Drove it in deep until I couldn't anymore. Drove away with it. Just insane."
The win was Heim's 12th of the season, which extended his own all-time series record for the most wins in a single Truck Series season. Heim nearly won half of the 25 races in the 2025 campaign. Heim's win also secured the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Owner's Championship for his No. 11 TRICON Garage team.
Majeski, who raced Heim cleanly on the final restart, would hold on to finish second. And while the two-tire pit strategy on the final pit stop put him at a disadvantage, Majeski feels the call by crew chief, Joe Shear Jr., was his only chance to win his second consecutive NASCAR Truck Series title.
"When we took two tires, we really needed the restart to play out right. I needed [Heim] to maybe get caught in third or fourth coming off of [Turn] 2, and when my spotter said, 'Inside 11' off of [Turn] 2, I knew we were probably a sitting duck there on two tires," Majeski said in his post-race press conference. "Yeah, I thought it was the right call. It gave ourselves a shot at the championship if that restart goes a little bit differently, and I get a little more of a gap, we're probably sitting here as two-time champions."
Kaden Honeycutt would conclude his season, which he started with Niece Motorsports, then at Young's Motorsports, and finished the campaign subbing for the injured Stewart Friesen at Halmar Friesen Racing, with a third-place finish, which was good enough to secure him a third-place finish in the championship fight.
Honeycutt came back from a lane-change penalty on the initial start of the race to be in a position to be in the conversation for a championship in the closing laps, but ultimately came up a little short.
"Didn't have the balance we needed there to fight for it," Honeycutt said in an interview on FS1. "Like I said, this run was for Stewart, this whole team. Definitely nothing to hang my head about for sure. My goal when I signed up this year was to at least be here. We did that.
"Definitely was a crazy journey to be here. Thanks to everybody that has been supporting me and been in my corner. Looking forward to next year, and hopefully have Stewart back in the seat where he belongs with this team."
Layne Riggs, who was eliminated from the Playoffs in the driver's championship battle in the Round of 8, was racing for the owner's championship. He had the race lead before the late-race cautions changed everything, and paved the way for Heim's dramatic win.
In the end, Riggs would still score a solid fourth-place finish, but without the win, he came up short of snagging an owner's championship for Front Row Motorsports.
Riggs rallied from pre-race penalties due to illegal parts confiscated from his No. 34 truck during pre-race inspection on Friday. As a result, Riggs, who won the pole, had to drop to the rear of the field and had to perform a pass-through penalty after the green flag of the race.
Rajah Caruth, Jake Garcia, Corey LaJoie, Chandler Smith, Tyler Reif, and Jack Wood rounded out the top-10 finishers in Friday night's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship Race.
Tyler Ankrum, the fourth driver in the Championship 4 fight, would be involved in the multi-truck melee, which sent the race into overtime. He would finish 14th, on the lead lap, but he would walk away from the night as the fourth-place driver in the championship fight.
Ankrum was frustrated by a lack of speed for the majority of the race, but just before the crash broke out, which ended his championship hopes, his No. 18 McAnally-Hilgemann Racing team had finally gotten his truck working well.
"We were just really, really bad in dirty air. Really bad on the long run. And then finally, when we came back down for the third Stage and put tires on, we took 3/4 of an inch of spoiler height out of it just to get the spoiler out of the air. Tightened me up in general, just make it drive a little better in dirty air, and that really made the truck come to life."
Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be for Ankrum as the night, and season belonged to Corey Heim and the No. 11 TRICON Garage team.
Race Results from the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway (Race 25 of 25):
Fin | Truck | Driver | Laps | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 11 | Corey Heim (P) (S1) (S2) (X) | 161 | -- |
2 | 98 | Ty Majeski (P) | 161 | 0.993 |
3 | 52 | Kaden Honeycutt (P) | 161 | 1.418 |
4 | 34 | Layne Riggs | 161 | 1.734 |
5 | 71 | Rajah Caruth | 161 | 2.223 |
6 | 13 | Jake Garcia | 161 | 2.627 |
7 | 77 | Corey LaJoie | 161 | 2.639 |
8 | 38 | Chandler Smith | 161 | 2.836 |
9 | 41 | Tyler Reif | 161 | 3.139 |
10 | 91 | Jack Wood | 161 | 3.377 |
11 | 42 | Matt Mills | 161 | 3.554 |
12 | 7 | Stefan Parsons | 161 | 3.755 |
13 | 88 | Matt Crafton | 161 | 4.609 |
14 | 18 | Tyler Ankrum (P) | 161 | 8.273 |
15 | 02 | Nathan Byrd | 161 | 12.761 |
16 | 66 | Luke Baldwin | 160 | 1 lap |
17 | 76 | Spencer Boyd | 159 | 2 laps |
18 | 35 | Greg Van Alst | 159 | 2 laps |
19 | 33 | Frankie Muniz # | 159 | 2 laps |
20 | 2 | Clayton Green | 158 | 3 laps |
21 | 15 | Tanner Gray | 157 | 4 laps |
22 | 74 | Caleb Costner | 157 | 4 laps |
23 | 62 | Cole Butcher | 154 | Out |
24 | 9 | Grant Enfinger | 154 | Out |
25 | 5 | Toni Breidinger # | 153 | 8 laps |
26 | 81 | Connor Mosack # | 147 | Out |
27 | 45 | Bayley Currey | 118 | Out |
28 | 1 | Brent Crews | 117 | Out |
29 | 99 | Ben Rhodes | 117 | Out |
30 | 44 | Andres Perez de Lara # | 117 | Out |
31 | 17 | Gio Ruggiero # | 117 | Out |
32 | 22 | Mason Maggio | 107 | Out |
33 | 19 | Daniel Hemric | 2 | Out |
34 | 26 | Dawson Sutton # | 0 | Out |
(P) indicates NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoff driver
# indicates Rookie of the Year contender
(S1) indicates Stage 1 winner
(S2) indicates Stage 2 winner
(X) indicates Xfinity Fastest Lap
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Toby Christie is the Editor-in-Chief of Racing America. He has 15 years of experience as a motorsports journalist and has been with Racing America since 2023.
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