Following Tyler Ankrum's win at Rockingham, which ended a 130-race winless streak for the 24-year-old McAnally-Hilgemann Racing driver, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series made the trip to Texas Motor Speedway on Friday night for the running of the SpeedyCash.com 250, which saw Tricon Garage's Corey Heim pick up his third win of the season in double-overtime.
After practice and qualifying were rained out, the lineup was set by NASCAR's metric, which takes into account each driver's finishing position from the previous race (70%) and the team's position in owner points (30%). That put Ankrum on the pole for the race. He would lead every lap until the competition caution on Lap 20.
The first stage saw one of the race's biggest incidents on Lap 31, when Gio Ruggiero clipped the front-stretch grass and came up the track into Kaden Honeycutt. Stewart Friesen and Brandon Jones were also involved. Grant Enfinger, who was one of few drivers to stay out following the big crash, passed Matt Crafton on the ensuing restart and went on to win the opening stage.
The second stage featured three more cautions, two of which were for Layne Riggs, who ultimately crashed out of the race on Lap 64 when he suffered heavy nose damage after hitting the wet infield grass. Heim got around Enfinger with five laps remaining in the second stage and would go on to win the stage.
Once the final stage got underway, the longest green-flag run of the race played out from Lap 88 until Lap 147 when Frankie Muniz brought out the caution. Three more cautions would soon follow, notably on Lap 155 for Friesen, Enfinger and Chandler Smith after getting together in Turns 3 and 4. Following a 4:54 red flag for debris cleanup, two more cautions would send the race to a double-overtime finish.
NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series: Heim prevails after late restarts
A season-high 11 cautions and two overtimes were not enough to keep Heim from victory lane. The Tricon Garage driver was three-wide with Daniel Hemric and Ben Rhodes coming to the white flag and pulled away on the final lap to win by 0.279 seconds over Hemric. It is his third win of the season and it comes after a dominating performance in which he led a race-high 96 of the 174 laps that were run. It is Heim's first win at Texas and the 14th win of his Truck Series career, making him the youngest driver in series history (22) to record that many wins, per NASCAR Insights.
Full SpeedyCash.com 250 finishing order and points results
SpeedyCash.com 250 finishing position | Driver | Points |
|---|---|---|
Winner | Corey Heim | 56 |
2nd | Daniel Hemric | 49 |
3rd | Rajah Caruth | 34 |
4th | Tyler Ankrum | 36 |
5th | Tanner Gray | 36 |
6th | Ben Rhodes | 36 |
7th | Matt Crafton | 39 |
8th | Bayley Currey | 29 |
9th | Dawson Sutton | 28 |
10th | Ty Majeski | 34 |
11th | Jack Wood | 26 |
12th | Stefan Parsons | 25 |
13th | Nick Sanchez | 0 |
14th | Nathan Byrd | 23 |
15th | Spencer Boyd | 22 |
16th | Chandler Smith | 32 |
17th | Carson Hocevar | 0 |
18th | Josh Reaume | 19 |
19th | Cody Dennison | 18 |
20th | Matt Mills | 26 |
21st | Jake Garcia | 20 |
22nd | Connor Mosack | 15 |
23rd | Grant Enfinger | 32 |
24th | Stewart Friesen | 19 |
25th | Frankie Muniz | 12 |
26th | Toni Breidinger | 11 |
27th | Luke Fenhaus | 10 |
28th | Layne Riggs | 10 |
29th | Andres Perez | 8 |
30th | Brandon Jones | 0 |
31st | Gio Ruggiero | 6 |
32nd | Kaden Honeycutt | 5 |
With his third win of the season and seven top-10s in eight races, Heim holds a 46-point lead over Smith in the overall standings. Heim, Smith, Ankrum and Hemric remain the only full-time drivers in the series to visit victory lane this season, putting them atop the playoff leaderboard. The next stop for the Truck Series is at Kansas Speedway for the running of the Heart of America 200 on Saturday, May 10 (7:30 p.m. ET, FS1, NRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Heim is the defending race winner.