In a Nutshell
The stats will show that Corey Heim led the most laps and won stage two, but he had to earn the overall race win in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Kansas Speedway on Friday (Sept. 27).
After starting 33rd following issues in practice that kept him from qualifying, Heim soared to third by the end of stage one. He then won stage two and led most of the final stage before pit strategy shook up the running order.
However, Heim was able to pass Ty Majeski on the final lap when the No. 98 ran out of fuel, allowing the No. 11 team to capture his sixth win of the season.
The Top Truckers at Kansas Speedway
Winner, Stage 2 Winner, Most Laps Led (64 of 134 laps), Biggest Mover (33rd to first): Corey Heim
Polesitter, Stage 1 Winner: Ty Majeski
Rookie of the Race: Layne Riggs
Top Storylines of the Race
- Conor Daly was forced to make a pass-through pit stop under green for a start violation. Daly ducked out of line before reaching the start-finish line on the initial start of the race.
- The first (and only) caution for cause didn’t come out until lap 77, when rookie Corey Day tangled with Matt Mills, fresh off a new contract extension with Niece Motorsports, resulting in a hard crash into the wall. Both drivers exited their trucks under their own power.
- For the first time in what seems like a very long time, the race featured green flag pit stops and a plethora of strategy, leading to a more interesting finish than the ones we’ve seen out of the Truck Series recently.
- Just three drivers led laps on the evening: Heim (64), Majeski (51), and Christian Eckes (19).
The Winning Move
After the caution for Mills and Day, some trucks came down pit road, including polesitter Majeski. Most of the rest of the guys who stayed out were anywhere between 3-10 laps short on fuel and likely needed another caution or make a green flag pit stop.
Another caution never came, so everyone who didn’t pit under the last caution came down with under 40 laps to go to top off on fuel, while Majeski and a couple others stayed out.
With fresh tires and the fastest truck, Heim quickly ran down Majeski, but was only able to close the gap to three seconds heading to the white flag. At that moment, a couple trucks who gambled on fuel began to run out.
Including Majeski.
Heim then soared past on the final lap to claim his sixth win of the season. Heim’s 33rd-place starting spot is the second-worst starting spot for a Truck Series race winner (Bobby Hamilton won Daytona International Speedway from 36th in 2005) and worst starting spot for a Truck Series race winner at Kansas, beating Heim’s own record of 13th from this past spring.
Championship Rundown
The championship fight is over for Ben Rhodes and Daniel Dye.
Dye had lots of contact with the wall and other trucks earlier in the race, forcing him to pit with a cut tire. That put him two laps down, neither of which he got back. Rhodes meanwhile, had an ill-handling truck all night, and tried to play fuel strategy at the end like teammate Majeski to try to throw a Hail Mary. However, not only did Grant Enfinger pass enough trucks to point his way back in, Rhodes also ran out of fuel coming to the white flag.
It was a disappointing title defense for Rhodes, who has made the Championship 4 each of the last three seasons, winning two titles from them.
Several playoff drivers found trouble throughout the evening. Three found the wall in the opening laps of the race, including Rajah Caruth, Dye and Taylor Gray. Heim had his aforementioned issues in practice. Then Rhodes and Majeski ran out of fuel. Finally, Tyler Ankrum was forced to start at the rear to begin the final stage following an uncontrolled tire on pit road.
Majeski locked himself into the Round of 8 following his stage one win, joining Heim, Eckes and Nick Sanchez as drivers who locked themselves in before the conclusion of the round.
The Round of 8 will begin with Heim, Eckes, Majeski and Sanchez, while Caruth, Enfinger, Ankrum and Gray start on the outside looking in.
Meanwhile in the owners’ points, the Spire Motorsports’ No. 7 and the Niece Motorsports No. 45 have been eliminated. That will mean whichever team wins the drivers’ championship will also win the owners’ championship at Phoenix Raceway.
Rookie Report
Introducing your 2024 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Rookie of the Year, Layne Riggs.
With fellow Rookie of the Year candidates Thad Moffitt (funding) and Conner Jones (scheduled off-week) not entered at Kansas, Riggs was able to lock up Rookie of the Year honors with four races still left in the season. Jones and Moffitt both are running part-time this season, which really didn’t give them a fighting chance unless they shined every week while Riggs faltered.
While Riggs fell just short of winning three races in a row and sweeping the Round of 8 as a non-playoff driver, he still managed a second-place finish, earning him a Round of 8 sweep as Rookie of the Race.
No. 1 – Brenden Queen (20th)
No. 02 – Nathan Byrd (19th)
No. 04 – Marco Andretti (34th)
No. 7 – Connor Mosack (10th)
No. 22 – Frankie Muniz (29th)
No. 25 – Dawson Sutton (fifth)
No. 38 – Layne Riggs (second)
No. 44 – Conor Daly (17th)
No. 46 – Justin Mondeik (26th)
No. 91 – Corey Day (32nd)
One Big Takeaway From This Race
It’s really a shame that Kansas is losing one of its Truck Series race dates in 2025.
It’s really a shame that Kansas is losing its fall race date in 2025.
The fall race in particular seems to provide lots of action and drama. Last season, Eckes won on a daring three-wide last lap pass on a late-race restart. This season, we saw a mostly-caution-free race that introduced green-flag pit stops for the first time in a long time.
That brought fuel strategy back into a truck race for the first time in an even longer time. And again, we got a last-lap pass after one driver’s strategy failed and the other’s succeeded.
That’s not to say the spring race isn’t a barnburner or won’t have just as much drama, as any race at Kansas has the potential to be the best of the year. But something about the fall race — a playoff cutoff race with different track temps allowing for different racing than we might see in the spring — it just makes it one of the best races of the Truck Series season.
Hopefully in 2026 we’ll see the second Kansas date return. However, the 2025 schedule we have is pretty good, too. Perhaps adding a fall Kansas date back in and expanding to 26 races in ’26 will make the Truck Series schedule that much better.
Talkin’ Truckers
Heim (winner), Riggs (second) and Kaden Honeycutt (fourth) break down their evenings:
Enfinger (ninth) discusses hanging on to advance to the Round of 8:
Majeski (15th) has zero regrets about taking the fuel gamble:
Day (32nd) and Mills (33rd) discuss what happened in their crash on lap 77:
Mills also talks about the relief about returning to Niece next season:
Earlier in the day, Riggs shared in a press conference how much he enjoys racing at Kansas:
Paint Scheme of the Race
Malcolm in the Mighty-Good-Looking Truck.
Actor-turned-racer Frankie Muniz returned to the Truck Series for his second start of the season with Reaume Brothers Racing. With him came Levrack, who sponsored his No. 22 truck. A few weeks earlier, RBR let the fans vote which paint scheme Muniz would run with Levrack, giving six different options from which to choose.
Quite frankly, this truck would have won this week’s paint scheme of the race regardless of which scheme hit the track; I liked all of them. But among all of them, the fan-favorite (and favorite of yours truly, admittedly) was option E, nicknamed ‘The Green Machine’ by RBR.
The paint scheme combination of green and purple is highly underrated, and Muniz and RBR proved that in the Kansas night. It was far and away the best looking truck on track, thanks to the fans that voted it into existence.
After a flat tire on lap 1, Muniz battled to 29th after starting 31st, battling through a broken rib suffered before practice to do so.
Next Stop
The Round of 8 begins in Sweet Home Alabama.
That’s right, the next round of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series playoffs opens at the most chaotic track on the schedule in Talladega Superspeedway. It’s safe to say that no one is safe.
Brett Moffitt won last year’s race in a one-off endeavor in a second Front Row Motorsports truck. As he celebrated in victory lane, one of the biggest moments of the Truck Series season went down in the garage area.
Will tempers carry over again? Will another driver sneak away with a win in a part-time or one-off start? Will we see an upset of the century? Or will it be the most boring superspeedway race of all-time?
Find out when the Truck Series takes to the 2.66-mile track for the Love’s RV Stop 250 on Friday, Oct. 4 at 5 p.m. ET. FS1 continues its television coverage of the Truck Series playoffs, while Motor Racing Network continues its season-long radio coverage of the Truck Series.
Anthony Damcott joined Frontstretch in March 2022. Currently, he is an editor and co-authors Fire on Fridays (Fridays); he is also the primary Truck Series reporter/writer and serves as an at-track reporter, among many other duties he takes on for the site. A proud West Virginia Wesleyan College alum from Akron, Ohio, Anthony is now a grad student. He is a theatre actor and fight-choreographer-in-training in his free time.
You can keep up with Anthony by following @AnthonyDamcott on X.