LONG POND, Penn. — For the first two stages of most NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races this season, it feels like it has been ‘Heim Time’ for almost every race.
It was the same Friday (June 20) at Pocono Raceway. TRICON Garage racer Corey Heim was putting on another clinic after he led a race high 48 of the 80 total laps at the Tricky Triangle.
But it ended the same way as it has so many times after a dominating performance from Heim – winless.
“I have a chance to do something pretty special with this No. 11 team,” Heim told Frontstretch “I feel like we’ve just obviously haven’t got it done one way or another. I feel like we kind of write a new way to have it go away on us every week, so, I don’t know. I just can’t put words to it.
“It’s just unfortunate.”
If it wasn’t for a pit stop with only two laps left before the end of the first stage and a subsequent caution flag, Heim would have won the first stage after taking the lead early and not looking back.
In stage two, things went much more according to plan, as Heim took the lead shortly after the beginning of the second segment and kept the top spot after pulling away to over a 1.5-second lead over second place.
“I thought we were the best truck over a longer run,” Heim said. “So, I think we would have been in pretty good shape there if we could have held the lead, but I think it was just depending on who was up front, and then from there, I think we were probably the best.”
The final stage appeared to be more of the same. The No. 11 Toyota Tundra took the lead from Rajah Caruth after the latter stayed out on old tires only moments after the green flag. He survived one caution flag period and was only literal seconds away from surviving another.
Then he felt his tire going down.
“We were all saving fuel pretty hard, so I wasn’t doing a lot of scuffing my tires,” Heim recalled. “But every lap or so at some point I would swerve left and right just to get the dirt and the debris off my tires if needed, and I had a three [second count] there coming into the choose cone, and I once again just kind of swerve up and get some dirt off, and I noticed there’s more slip in the rear than usual and my guys looked at the, the photos and lo’ and behold it was down.”
While approaching the third and final turn, Heim fell off the pace and went to pit road for a new wheel. With no other caution appearing in the final 20-lap run, Heim could only ride in 23rd as his chances of a fifth win of the season disappeared.
It’s the fifth time this year the 22-year-old has led the most laps and failed to win in 2025.
“I’m not going to sit here and act like it’s been all bad luck that we haven’t closed them out,” Heim said. “But it certainly doesn’t help when things like this happen.”
There is some solace for his efforts, however. While Heim did earn another playoff point with his stage two victory, it was his 12th of the year, as well. It broke the all-time record for most stage wins from a Truck Series driver in a single season.
“It doesn’t really surprise me,” Heim said in reaction to the broken record. “We’ve had a lot of good qualifying speed this year compared to prior years, and we’ve all always had good race speed but just kind of putting it all together and qualifying up front, being able to compete with the stage wins and just executing really well.”
And there are still 11 races to go.
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loud column, co-host of the Frontstretch Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT