The 2025 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season wrapped up last weekend, and as a whole, the result is the only one from NASCAR’s Championship Weekend at Phoenix Raceway that fans can accept in its entirety.
Corey Heim completed a complete curb-stomping of the field all season with his 12th win of the season and a well-deserved championship to boot. Heim saved his season on the first overtime restart, making an insane seven-wide move on the absolute bottom of the apron of the racetrack in a restart that will be talked about for years to come.
The move capped off what can only be described as a butt-whooping season by the No. 11 team.
A look at the stats will prove just how otherworldly Heim’s season was.
Of course, there’s the obvious: 12 wins on the season destroys the record for the winningest season in Truck Series history.
It shatters the record previously set by Greg Biffle, who scored nine wins all the way back in 1999. As the playoffs kicked off a few months ago, this was the biggest storyline to follow for the No. 11 team. Heim tied Biffle’s record at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, then broke it outright at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL.
Then for good measure, he tacked on two more wins, giving him a whopping 48% win percentage. And that’s not including the races that he had a shot at winning such as the spring race at Martinsville Speedway and the race at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
In fact, Heim could’ve realistically had a shot to win every race on the calendar, because Heim led at least one lap in every single race of the season, the first driver to ever do so.
As such, Heim’s lap-led total also breaks a record.
Heim’s 1,625 laps led is the most by a Truck Series driver in history, topping a 29-year-old record set by Mike Skinner, who led 1,533 laps in 1996.
For reference, the driver who led the second-most laps on the season, Layne Riggs, didn’t even surpass 500 total laps led. Heim beat out Riggs for most laps led by only 1,135 laps — you know, only a slim margin.
Additionally, his 19 top fives also breaks a record from 1996, in which both Ron Hornaday Jr. and Jack Sprague both scored 18 apiece. In the final 11 races, Heim finished no worse than third, all while winning eight of them. His seven poles led all drivers on the season.
Surprisingly, Heim’s 21 top 10s is not a record, as just last season Christian Eckes scored 22 in a 23-race season, among other drivers in other seasons. Heim’s four non-top 10s included a 23rd at EchoPark Speedway, a 17th at North Wilkesboro (after a spin from the lead on the final lap), an 18th at Michigan International Speedway and a 23rd at Pocono Raceway.
However, 23 of those finishes were on the lead lap, something that hasn’t been seen since Johnny Sauter did it all the way back in 2010. And calling back once again to 1996, Heim had an unbelievable average finish of fifth, which is the best in the Truck Series since that ‘96 season, when Hornaday scored an average finish of 4.5, still the best we’ve seen in the series.
Not to mention the whopping 79 playoff points, which would have clinched him the title even before the finale if it weren’t for the points reset.
And that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of just how much Heim brought out the belt against the field (as he said himself).
I mean, how can we ever possibly see a single season so dominant again in NASCAR? Hell, take the Truck Series out of it, will we ever see a butt-whooping like this in any of NASCAR’s premier series again? Those numbers might never be touched, try as drivers might.
It was a historic season for Heim, and after two straight seasons of coming up short as the favorite, the third time truly was the charm for the 23-year-old, finally giving him that long-awaited title.
The worst part about the season ending for Heim is that we still don’t know what he’s doing next season.
He should have already been in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series (boy, that’s gonna take some getting used to) or the Cup Series by now, but nobody within Toyota has found the funding or the room to bring him up.
I know Heim’s commitment to Toyota and Toyota Gazoo Racing is deep, but if I’m another manufacturer, how do you not see what this kid has done and give him a blank check to try to poach him?
It’s a shame that the defending Truck Series champion may not even be able to move up next year, especially after what he did, plain and simple.
Nevertheless, it will be a long time (if ever) before anyone forgets about the pure, unadulterated stomping that the power of Heim Time and the TRICON Garage No. 11 team put on the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series field in 2025.
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