Corey Heim held on to win the NASCAR Xfinity Truck Series Long John Silver’s 200 at Martinsville Speedway Friday night in his TRICON Garage No. 11 Toyota, despite persistent race throughout the event. It was his third victory in the Truck Series in only 26 starts and his first trip to victory lane this season.
“This race was cut short and that’s definitely unfortunate, but this truck was fast all night,” Heim said after the race. “I couldn’t ask for a better group of guys.”
The beginning of the race was delayed by almost 2 ½ hours, finally getting underway shortly before 10 p.m. The first 25 laps were run using a weather package specifically designed for driving on a wet track. Then, after the track was deemed dry enough, a competition caution was called to allow the teams to change back to the regular dry weather slick tires.
An on-track incident with 83 laps remaining brought out the final caution and with it came more rain. At this point, NASCAR called the race official on Lap 124 of the originally scheduled 200 laps.
Kyle Busch finished a disappointing second and said, “It did not go our way today, unfortunately.”
“We just didn’t have a good enough short-run truck,” he explained. “Being a little bit loose and free that we were, we were hoping that would pay off in the long run but never had a long run. The longest run of the race was on rain tires.”
Zane Smith, Ty Majeski and Tanner Gray rounded out the top five with Ben Rhodes, Matt DiBenedetto, Taylor Gray, William Sawalich and Chase Purdy completing the top 10.
Majeski remains on top of the Truck Series driver standings by 26 points over Zane Smith, followed by Ben Rhodes (-49), Heim (-71) and Christian Eckes (-72).
The Truck Series will take some time off with its next race scheduled for Saturday, May 6 at Kansas Speedway.
