The NASCAR Truck Series has reached its last race! The championship battle at Phoenix is on. One driver who has been the most impressive this season has to be Corey Heim. Be it wins or consistency, no driver has come close to him. In the 22 races so far, he’s managed 6 wins, 13 top-5s, and 17 top-10s. Entering the final race, Heim was clearly a favorite to win this year’s championship.

However, the Phoenix race did not go as Heim had hoped. After starting in P2, a silly penalty dropped him at the rear of the field. What is it with him and Phoenix? Even last year he was a favorite to win, but screwed up the final race. This was when Carson Hocevar turned him, and Heim ended up 18th in the race and finished the season in 4th place. And this year was no different! While he did manage to better his performance, it was still not enough!

Corey Heim is pushed to the rear of the field

On a restart at the start of the final stage, Heim jumped the line before crossing the start-finish line, which earned him the restart penalty and pushed him to the rear. NASCAR on X wrote, “PENALTY: The No. 11 of Corey Heim has been issued a restart violation. He will have to restart at the tail end of the field.”

This left the #11 driver frustrated. “I don’t get it. Everyone was cutting down either way. It doesn’t make sense to me. The 38 cut back to the right. I was following him. He was the one who changed lines, not me.” While Heim was rattled, “That’s b.s.” as he knew it was going to be an uphill task, his crew asked him to look at the bigger picture. He was told to focus, and they’ll lose this battle, but they’re still going to win the war.

However, after starting from the rear, Heim was quick to gain positions. To his good fortune, there were two quick cautions, putting him in the top 10 with only a few laps past the penalty. The Tricon Garage driver eventually took P2 behind Ty Majeski, but that was the extent of it. Majeski was in a league of his own as he took the checkered flag and the championship after beating Heim by almost 4 seconds as the #11 took P2. The #98 driver led 132 laps out of the 150, being a force to reckon with.

Delighted by the achievement, Majeski after the race said, “There’s a lot of times it looks like a far dream, [but] it’s possible You just need to find a way to set yourself apart from everybody else. I did it by working in the shop. Started out as an engineer at ThorSport in 2021 with three or four races and didn’t know what it was going to turn into. And dammit, now we’re champions.” However, Heim, despite being the winningest driver, was unable to bag the title and was naturally left dissatisfied after the race.

Corey Heim is left disappointed after the finale

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Heim only led only 14 laps, however, he believes that in the first stage, they were pretty close to taking over the race. “They were unbelievably lights-out the whole race. From the get-go I felt like we fired off pretty free in stage one, and we were able to reel him back in. He seemed to struggle in traffic a little bit.” However, other than that, penalty or no penalty, no one looked in contention to beat Majeski. Look at the finishing times, Christian Eckes finished 3rd (+6.5 secs behind Majeski) and Grant Enfinger finished 5th (+10.4 secs behind Majeski).

The #11 confessing to Majeski’s dominance said, “[Majeski] was probably two-tenths better than me a lap me pushing 100%. Then the unfortunate part is I feel like our Tundra TRD Pro is really good. We were probably two-tenths better than the guys behind us.” But the two-tenths were never bridged and to Majeski’s luck, as his lead increased, there were no cautions, giving him a smooth ride to finish. And while for Heim, things did go a bit downhill after the penalty, according to him, still, the #98 was extremely fast to catch.

“Obviously the penalty was brutal at first but we were able to tear away through it and get back to third in like two restarts. It did not do much damage, maybe a little bit to the tires. But when you are two-tenths off the 98 you need more than a little bad tire to make it work…I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say I thought it was a little harder than it was. I was just able to choose the right lanes and get the right runs on restarts and fizzle my way through there quicker than I thought I was going to,” Heim added.

Still, that did not prove to be enough! Maybe 2025 will be the year when the #11 team will solve their Phoenix problem. Do you think Heim has a shot at winning the title next year?