(Photo: Mitchell Richtmyre | The Podium Finish)
Corey Heim’s regular season went about as flawlessly as it could have.
Two wins. Thirteen top 10s. An average finish of 7.1 and a regular-season championship.
Oh yeah, he missed a race, too. Despite having to sit out of the June race at WWT Raceway because of illness, that hasn’t tarnished the TRICON Garage driver’s consistency. In the four races since, Heim hasn’t finished worse than sixth as he closed out his regular-season title with ease at Richmond Raceway.
“Our consistency over the last two or three months has been really good — just being able to collect a lot of stage points and get some top-fives and wins along the way,” Heim said Tuesday during NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Media Day. “I think as long as we are able to continue that and continue the momentum heading into the Playoffs, we will be in really good shape.”
Heim’s victories came at Martinsville Speedway in the spring and Mid-Ohio in July — both races that happened to start in wet-weather conditions. Along with his 10 playoff points for the victories, Heim recorded five playoff points stage wins. Including his 15-point bonus, he has 30 total playoff points, creating a substantial buffer for each of the first two rounds.
“From a logistical viewpoint as far as the amount of Playoff points that put us ahead – [the regular-season championship] means a lot,” Heim said. “Just being able to have that buffer going into the Playoffs, and not have that close counter with the Playoff cutline, right from the start. I feel like it is nice to start the Playoffs off with a little less stress and being able to go from there.”
“At the same time, if you have one bad race, one DNF and you are kind of back to earth again. I feel like there’s positives and negatives to it. I think that kind of stems from the Playoff format as it is, but it is certainly not a bad thing to be the regular season champion.”
Going into the playoffs, Heim’s major focus is closing out races, something he said he hasn’t done a good enough job at.
One race that came to mind was the penultimate regular-season event at Pocono.
Heim’s No. 11 Toyota Tundra dominated, leading 27 of the 60 circuits around the three-turn, 2.5-mile triangle. He fired off on a restart from the lead with six laps to go, but in Turn 2 on the final lap, his former bossman Kyle Busch passed him for the win while he finished second.
The 21-year-old from Marietta, Georgia used that as a learning experience.
Heim races Ben Rhodes at Richmond. (Photo: Wayne Riegle | The Podium Finish)
“I think for me it just shows that nothing is guaranteed. We had the race won coming to the white flag,” Heim explained. “I saw him like 10 truck lengths back in the mirror going into (Turn) 1. I thought we were in good shape, and the next thing you know, he’s blowing my doors off. I think just to always be on top of it. You can never take a deep breath and call the races quits, not that I did, but I feel like it really puts it in perspective at the same time. It really shows you have to be on it, every single race.
“The main thing is just closing races out. There has been a couple of instances this year where we’ve led the most laps, and had the best truck, and I feel like we kind of faded at the end. As an organization, we’ve been working on our longer runs and how to improve that on a weekly basis. As a driver, I think I have to get better too at keeping the tires on it and pacing myself for the end of the race, just to put ourselves in a better position come 10 laps to go. If we have a weak point, I feel like that is our weak point right now.”
While at Kyle Busch Motorsports part-time last year, Heim competed in all seven playoff races behind the wheel of the No. 51 truck for the owner’s championship. That gave him some high-pressure experience, he said, but this will be the first time he’s embarking on the real deal.
Trips to Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park and the Milwaukee Mile kick off the Round of 10. Afterward, it’ll be a trip back to Kansas Speedway, the only circuit the series visits twice in 2023. He finished second in May.
But come Friday, Heim will be ready to hit the ground running in Indianapolis.
“It’s vital to start the round right and have a good run at IRP,” he said. “Going out and being on top of it from the very beginning is going to be really important. Just being able to unload at IRP in practice and being on top of it as soon as we get there. Have a good practice, qualify well, get a good pit selection and just run up front all race. If you put yourself in a hole early, it’s really hard to recover from that, so I think just being in the right mindset going into IRP and following that up with Milwaukee and Kansas.”
(Editor’s Note: Rob Tiongson contributed to this feature from NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoff Media Day)
