With five wins this season and only three races remaining in the regular season, it’s Heim Time after Corey Heim has been named regular season champion in the Craftsman Truck Series.
This is Heim’s second regular season championship in three years.
Currently Heim has 143 point lead in the point standings.
Needing just 39 points to secure the championship, Heim earned 45 with a third-place finish in the TSport 200 Friday night at Indianapolis Raceway Park after sitting on the pole when qualifying was rained out. Layne Riggs dominated the race for the win.
Believing he didn’t have the best truck, Heim said it, “feels really good. Just a testament to how good I’ve been this year. I feel like this is probably the first race where I haven’t had a legitimate shot to compete for the win, so that really says something.”
Heim led the first 20 laps of the race at IRP driving the number eleven truck for Tricon Garage before Layne Riggs took over the lead and except for pit stops, never gave it up. But those 20 laps were enough to keep the streak going – Heim has led laps in every race this season; winning five of them.
In his previous three races at IRP, Heim led a total of just 18 laps.
Heim noted, “I was actually excited to come here and try to improve. I’ve never felt like this track has been my best, but unfortunately, just kind of roamed around the outside of the top five all day and had a really good restart there at the end to get us track position to finish fourth.”
Heim earns an additional 15 playoff points for winning the regular season championship; adding to the 39 he has already earned. The Craftsman Truck Series playoff begins at Darlington Raceway on Aug 30 – Labor Day weekend.
Speaking on the playoffs and looking for his first series championship Heim said, “I don’t really look at it any sort of way to be honest with you. I think we focus on every given week as much as we possibly can to give 100 percent, so the playoffs will be no different. Just very proud of the effort throughout the year for us to get here and onto Watkins Glen.”
The Craftsman Truck Series is off next week while the Xfinity and Cup Series drivers travel to Iowa but will return next month for some road course racing at Watkins Glen International.