HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Corey Heim made Saturday’s strongest bid to be the next locked-in championship contender in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs, doing nearly everything short of posting his series-best seventh victory of the year.
Instead, the 22-year-old Tricon Garage driver settled for an outcome that put him that much closer to his season-long aspirations.
Heim finished fourth in Saturday’s Baptist Health 200, leading a race-high 68 of the 134 laps until a late shift in strategies flipped the event’s complexion. Heim rallied after his last pit stop split the final stage, but Grant Enfinger conserved his fuel for the final 55-lap run to the checkered flag, notching his second consecutive Truck Series win.
Heim’s yield was the day’s second-best points tally — 52 to Enfinger’s 55 — and a better sense of comfort heading to the Round of 8’s final race next weekend at Martinsville Speedway.
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“It was pretty drama-free on my side, just kind of internal battles as far as the truck handling on late-race runs,” Heim said, “But you can’t be mad about a top-three truck all day, and we had a great points day, and that’s what we came here to do. Would have been great to win and make Martinsville easy and just focus on Phoenix, but we’re in a great points position going into next week, so nothing to hang our heads about.”
Heim set the tone by winning the pole position in Friday’s qualifying session, and he kept his No. 11 Toyota out front for 54 of the first 60 laps in the opening two stages. Heim won the first stage and was runner-up to Enfinger in the second, adding 19 points to his running tally.
When a caution flag flew for Matt Mills’ hard crash on Lap 76, Enfinger and a group of others stopped for fuel and tires. No. 11 crew chief Scott Zipadelli opted against it, keeping Heim out until Lap 101 for his final trip to pit road.
“I feel like we had a winning truck, a top-two truck,” Zipadelli told NASCAR.com. “When they pitted early, for me, I felt like it was definitely too early to take that risk. But for them, those guys that pitted then, they didn’t really have a truck that could win, so that was a pretty good option for them. If it did go green like it did, it’d work out, right, but statistically, we usually have a caution here.”
No more yellow flags came out, and Enfinger — who stopped one lap later than the rest of the opportunistic early group — was able to nurse his No. 9 Chevrolet to the end. Heim picked up a handful of spots on the final lap as the fuel tanks for Nick Sanchez and others sputtered dry, just short of the finish.
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Thanks to his stage-points bonanza and his 13th top-five finish of the year, Heim enters the Round of 8 finale at Martinsville next Friday (6 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) with a sizable 49-point advantage over the elimination line. Enfinger is the only driver officially clinched for the Championship 4 battle in the Nov. 8 finale at Phoenix Raceway; his Oct. 4 victory at Talladega Superspeedway sealed that title shot, and his triumph Saturday actually provided Heim with a backhanded benefit — blocking other playoff contenders from clinching.
“With the 9 winning, for sure it certainly makes it easier that there’s only one winner. If there was another one, it would have been a lot tighter to the cutline,” Heim said. “So, we can still point our way out of it if we have a bad day, so you can’t just take a deep breath and cruise through that race by any means. But the goal still remains the same to win every race, and that’s what we’re gonna do next week.”