NORTH WILKESBORO, N.C. — Corey Heim had offered a thank-you to rival Layne Riggs earlier in Saturday’s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race, a note of appreciation soaked in heavy sarcasm after a restart rough-up through Turns 1 and 2 at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
Many laps later, Heim was not nearly as appreciative under similar circumstances in the same set of corners, but this time with a trip to Victory Lane at stake in a heated overtime dash.
Hard racing with Riggs’ No. 34 Ford sent Heim’s No. 11 Tricon Garage Toyota spinning on the final lap, allowing Riggs’ Front Row Motorsports teammate Chandler Smith an avenue to slip by for his second victory of the year with Riggs the runner-up. Heim had led a race-best 162 of the 255 laps from the pole position, but had just a 17th-place finish — last on the lead lap — to show for his efforts in the Window World 250.
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Heim exited his truck post-race and made his way to confront Riggs on pit road. Their conversation was brief and one-sided, but didn’t escalate to a physical altercation. But Heim let it be known in TV and radio interviews beforehand that he felt Riggs’ tactics equaled “scum racing on his part.” He also made reference to the previous week’s last-lap contact at Kansas Speedway, where Riggs nearly knocked Carson Hocevar from the lead, drawing a middle-finger salute at the checkered flag.
“Just why? More than anything,” said Heim, who entered as the Truck Series’ points leader. “He tried to do it to the 7 (Hocevar) last week for the win, and mission accomplished for him, I guess, this week – and it cost him one, too. I don’t know. We’ve given up so many of them this year after dominating the race. The 38 (Smith) was the only other guy that was rightfully good. I felt like he deserved to win over anyone else, not the 34 (Riggs). I got really loose into (Turn) 3. Just struggled being loose on the short runs, and he had an opportunity, and he wrecked me. Just disappointed.”
Heim had the lead and lane choice for the start of the deciding two-lap dash, and when he drifted high through Turns 3 and 4 with the white flag in view, Riggs saw an opening. Riggs admitted that his attempt at a slide-job pass came up short in the next set of corners, but said he’d have to watch footage of his move before making a final assessment.
When it came to sizing up how he’s made last-lap contact with the leading truck in two consecutive weeks, Riggs was blunt.
“If I have a reputation of going for wins, I’m not going to regret that at all,” Riggs said. “You know, I feel like I came from short-track racing, last-lap battles, and feel like that’s what this kind of racing is made for. I feel like it’s not like we’ve seen at Martinsville in the past, and gotten upset. I feel like it was a strong move, and I thought it was going to pay off. But sadly, didn’t get the win.”
Heim was in a prime position to march away to a series-leading fourth win of the year. A caution flag, though, for Tyler Tomassi’s wall crunch deep in the pack erased a 3.3-second Heim lead and tightened the field with 39 laps left in what was scheduled to be a 250-lap event.
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No. 11 crew chief Scott Zipadelli opted to keep Heim out to retain track position during the yellow, but the Front Row teammates split their strategies — Riggs stayed out, but Smith pitted for fresh Goodyear tires. Heim held his ground as Smith methodically drove from fifth to second, steadily closing the gap until another caution — this time for Ben Rhodes’ contact with Brent Crews — bunched the field again with four laps left in regulation.
Zipadelli said he felt that track position was more important than fresh tires for that final stretch, and that Smith and Riggs both burned up their equipment trying to keep pace. Strategy or not, the veteran crew chief was left to lament a Saturday matinee that got away.
“Oddly enough, it always seems to be the same trucks bringing out these late-race cautions,” Zipadelli told NASCAR.com. “If you look back, the past four or five races, you’ll see the same trucks do it every time. I know they’re not doing it on purpose, but they’ve got to get a hold of their own trucks so we can race clean to the end of the race. But anyways, you know that’s the way the Front Row truck team races. You know, they want to run physical and shove you around. They can’t beat us, so they want to shove us around so they can beat us.
“So you know, what comes around, goes around. It’s not going to deter us from coming back and trying to win next week at Charlotte. But payback’s a bitch. We’ve got to go to the (playoffs), and those guys aren’t making a whole lot of friends because everybody in the garage knows that either one of those kids can’t race clean. That’s just not the way we race. It’s not the way I was brought up. It’s not the way I like to do it. I think it’s kind of embarrassing that they can’t race side by side with professionals, right?”