Heim Masters Lime Rock Roads For Another Truck Victory

Corey Heim (11) leads the field Saturday at Lime Rock Park. (Rusty Jones/Nigel Kinrade Photography)

LAKEVILLE, Conn. – What was billed as a potential wild-card race for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series ended up being the latest episode of The Corey Heim Show.

Heim led all but one lap of the LiUNA 150 from the pole Saturday afternoon to win the inaugural Truck Series visit to the 1.478-mile, seven-turn Lime Rock Park road course.

Though the field had three shots at the No. 11 Safelite Toyota Tundra TRD Pro on restarts during the 100-lapper, no one could fully unseat Heim from the top of the order and the field just had to watch him drive away.

Following a final green flag with five laps left, after Matt Mills stalled in the turn-one grass to bring out the only caution for cause on lap 90, Heim pulled away to the checkers by 1.381 seconds over runner-up Ty Majeski.

It marked the 16th Truck Series victory of Heim’s career, and the 22-year-old from Marietta, Ga., is the youngest to reach that threshold in the history of NASCAR’s third-highest division.

“It’s really incredible,” said Heim of his dominant performance. “These road courses I really look forward to; I prepare pretty hard for them, and to see all that pay off the way it did today is super special.

“Our truck was so good all race. I can’t complain one bit about that,” he added. “Pretty much a flawless day, so we’ll take this momentum, move forward, and try to collect some more wins we probably should have had already this year.”

The only lap that Heim wasn’t credited with leading was lap 95, coming to the final restart, when Layne Riggs got a better launch and was ahead by a half truck length at start-finish.

Riggs overdrove into turn one, however, and lost all his track position as Heim and others soared past and never looked back. IMSA star Jordan Taylor also went off the road in the fracas as well after running inside the top five most of the day.

Majeski was one of three ThorSport Racing trucks that drove through the chaos into the top five late, with the defending series champion notching his best run all season.

Heim’s teammate Gio Ruggiero was third, followed by Ben Rhodes and Australian Supercars ace Cam Waters, who was piloting the ‘all-star’ No. 66 entry for Duke and Rhonda Thorson.

Chandler Smith, Josh Bilicki, Brent Crews, Daniel Hemric, and Tyler Ankrum closed out the top 10.

In a sweep of the day, Heim won both stages and posted the Xfinity Fastest Lap on his way to the race victory, collecting the maximum 61 points available for a single race.

He leaves Connecticut 144 markers ahead of Smith in the race for the regular season championship.

NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series teams get nearly a full month off before heading to Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park for the third-to-last race before the start of the playoffs.

Broadcast coverage of the TSPORT 200 is slated for Friday night, July 25 at 8 p.m. ET, live on FS1, the NASCAR Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.