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TRUCKS: Corey Heim Endures Wild Double-Overtime Finish for Texas Win

Toby Christie

Rusty Jarrett | LAT Images for Toyota GAZOO Racing

Corey Heim flat-out dominated Friday night's NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series SpeedyCash.com 250 at Texas Motor Speedway, but despite having a lead as big as 16-seconds with just six trucks left on the lead lap at one point in the race, Heim was taken to the limit on his path to a win in a double-overtime finish.

RESULTS: SpeedyCash 250 at Texas

"Yeah, I wasn't letting them take that one away from me," Hemric said after the race. "I've given away too many this year so far."

The 22-year-old Heim led the race six times for a race-high 96 laps, but on the first Overtime attempt, the driver of the No. 11 TRICON Garage Toyota Tundra nearly lost the lead in a three-wide battle with Rajah Caruth and Ben Rhodes.

However, Heim was saved by the timing of a caution for Matt Mills plowing into the infield grass on the restart, which allowed Heim to enter the second Overtime restart as the race leader.

Things didn't get any easier for Heim in Overtime attempt No. 2 as Rhodes, who lined up alongside Heim on the front row, got an incredible restart. As Heim and Rhodes were battling tooth and nail for the lead, Daniel Hemric emerged out of nowhere to take Heim and Rhodes three-wide for the race lead coming to the white flag.

"Yeah, they tried to take me three-wide into [Turn] 1, and just drove until I couldn't anymore," Heim said of Hemric's move at the white flag. "Kind of catching my breath as you can tell, but so grateful for Toyota, Safelite, and TRICON Garage."

Rhodes would get run wide in Turns 1 and 2, which would leave Heim and Hemric to settle the battle for the win among themselves, and Heim easily out-powered Hemric back to the finish line for the race win.

For Heim, this is his third win through the opening eight races of the 2025 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season, and he is now up to 14 wins through his 72-race NASCAR Truck Series career.

With the win, Heim extends his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series regular-season championship point lead to 46 points over Chandler Smith, who finished 16th after being involved in a late-race crash.

While Hemric came up just 0.279 seconds shy of his second win of the season, the McAnally-Hilgemann Racing driver, who was on 50-lap-old tires at the end of the race, was just thankful to finish runner-up after the up-and-down night that he endured at Texas Motor Speedway.

"You look at the boxscore, and you'll think, 'Oh yeah, started second, finished second. Stages looked like they finished okay,' but man, it was a struggle," Hemric admitted. "The first Stage definitely didn't hit the balance like we wanted to with this NAPA Silverado. Gosh, wanted so bad to get ourselves back into the ballgame, and [crew chief] Josh Graham did that with some adjustments, some strategy, and next thing you know, we found ourselves doing what we do as the 19 group."

Rajah Caruth would come home in the third position in the No. 71 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, which marks his second-consecutive top-five finish, and fourth-straight top-10 finish in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.

Tyler Ankrum, who won a few weeks ago at Rockingham Speedway, finished fourth, and he was followed to the finish line by Tanner Gray, who brought the No. 15 TRICON Garage Toyota to a fifth-place finish.

Rhodes, who was in the battle for the win at the white flag, would fade to a sixth-place finish after being run wide going into Turn 1 on the final lap by Heim. After the race, Rhodes wasn't pleased with how he was raced by Heim in the closing laps.

"We had a good showing tonight. I was a little upset, and even still watching the replay, with how I was ran in [turns] 3 and 4 by Heim," Rhodes said. "Basically, you could see him come off of the bottom, and the groove is extremely narrow here, that's why all of those wrecks kept happening. I had to lift, I think he had to lift, and that's what opened up for three-wide down the frontstretch, and why we're in sixth-place."

Matt Crafton, Bayley Currey, Rookie of the Year contender Dawson Sutton, and Ty Majeski rounded out the top-10 finishers in the wild race at Texas.

Due to a rash of crashes, many due to trucks slipping into the soggy infield grass at Texas Motor Speedway, where it had rained heavily earlier in the day, only 19 trucks of the 32 that took the green flag, ended up finishing the race.

The first big crash occurred on Lap 31, when Gio Ruggiero, who was running inside the top-five at the time, misjudged the frontstretch dog-leg, and caught the infield grass. This launched his No. 17 TRICON Garage Toyota into the air, and obliterated the front end of his truck.

Ruggiero would careen across the track, and collect Niece Motorsports driver Kaden Honeycutt and his TRICON Garage teammate Brandon Jones, which would end the race for all three drivers.

On Lap 65, Layne Riggs would suffer slight contact with Luke Fenhaus, which would send Riggs spinning into the infield grass. Much like Ruggiero, Riggs' No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford F-150 sunk into the mud, and it destroyed the front end of his truck, which ended his race, and resulted in a 28th-place result.

Late in the race, Stewart Friesen would lose control of his No. 52 Toyota while battling for the second position on Lap 155. Friesen would try to save his truck, but would overcorrect, which would cause him to collide incredibly hard with Grant Enfinger, and Chandler Smith.

While Friesen and Enfinger were done for the night in the crash, Smith soldiered on and finished 16th, and was the last truck scored on the lead lap.

Next up for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series is a trip to Kansas Speedway for the Heart of America 200. The ninth race of the 25-race NASCAR Truck Series season is set for Saturday, May 10 and will be televised on FS1. Television coverage of the race will kick off at 7:30 PM ET.

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Toby Christie
TOBY CHRISTIE

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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