TRUCKS: Heim Cashes In On Riggs' Misfortune For Eighth Win of Season

Corey Heim just keeps on rolling. The 23-year-old TRICON Garage driver capitalized on late-race misfortune from Layne Riggs to capture his eighth win of the 2025 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season in Saturday's Sober or Slammer 200 at Darlington Raceway.

Race Results: Sober or Slammer 200 at Darlington

“So proud of these TRICON guys, it feels like I’m in a dream, eight wins this year is just phenomenal," Heim said in his post-race winner interview on FS1. "It’s crazy to look back on, but we’ve also got so much to look forward to, so just really speechless as far as the effort. It’s been an awesome ride, and we’ll keep it going.”

Heim, who now boasts 19 career wins in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, has pulled to within one win of Greg Biffle's all-time single-season series record of nine wins, which he accomplished in 1999. More importantly, for Heim's Playoff aspirations, this win automatically advances him from the Round of 10 of the Playoffs into the Round of 8.

"I mean, I don't really individualize anything like that," Heim said of the single-season win record. "I think the goal every week is to go out and try to win the race, of course. And I feel like our mentality and our approach is really good for that on a consistency basis. We're in a spot to not feel desperate, but I don't feel like we've ever gone into a race feeling super desperate."

Heim continued, "At the same time, it would be awesome to have that as a career milestone or a record for myself in the Truck Series and stuff, but I think that is something that I will reflect on rather than look forward to, personally."

Through the opening 128 laps of the race, Heim and Riggs traded the lead back-and-forth to one another six times, with Heim scoring the Stage 1 win, and Riggs taking the Stage 2 win. In the final Stage of the race, it looked like Riggs had emerged as the runaway driver at the front of the field, but disaster struck for the driver of the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford F-150 on Lap 128.

Riggs would cut a right front tire after colliding with the outside wall in Turns 1 and 2, which allowed Heim to scoot by for the race lead. Riggs would salvage a 17th-place finish thanks to a caution for a spinning Kaden Honeycutt in an incident with Andres Perez de Lara moments after Riggs slowed from the lead.

Despite the disappointing finish, Riggs was still seeing the positives from his dominant day.

"I think that shows we're still a contender. We're still in a great spot, here, but driver error," Riggs explained. "They say Too Tough To Tame, the Lady in Black came up and bit us today. Man, I had a great CLEW Nicotine pouches Ford F-150 all day. Led a lot of laps, felt like we were really contenders. Started to fade a little bit, and then I just made a mistake."

On the ensuing restart on Lap 134, Heim was able to control the race, and he never looked back as he crossed the finish line 0.766 seconds ahead of fellow Playoff contender Daniel Hemric for the race win.

"The last restart there, I feel like our launches were pretty good today, starting from the front row. But I think everybody knows, Darlington restarts, if you're side-by-side going into [Turn] 1, it can get pretty messy. But try not to overthink it, just kind of do what I was doing all day and continued my good launches, and by the time I was clear, I knew that it was sort of ours to lose at that point," Heim explained.

Grant Enfinger came home in the third position, and Ty Majeski rallied back from issues early in the race to finish fourth.

Trevor Bayne, the 2011 Daytona 500 champion who was making his first NASCAR National Series start since the 2023 season, competed admirably all race long, and in the closing laps, he was able to work his way up to a solid fifth-place finish.

After the race, an elated Bayne admitted that he was more nervous going into Saturday's race than likely any race he's ever competed in.

"For me, I didn't know what to expect and honestly was probably the most nervous I've ever been coming into a race," Bayne said in a media scrum on pit road after the race. "I don't know if it's because I didn't want my young drivers talking smack to me, or if you just never know when your last race is going to be."

Tanner Gray, Tyler Ankrum, Timmy Hill, Corey Day, and Jake Garcia rounded out the top-10 finishers in the race.

Four NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoff contenders finished outside the top-10 of the final running order on Saturday afternoon at Darlington Raceway. Those drivers included Rajah Caruth, who finished 12th, Riggs in 17th, Honeycutt in 18th, and Chandler Smith, who exited the race early after damage sustained due to a blown tire, finished 30th.

Jake Garcia will leave the Sober or Slammer 200 as the final driver inside the eight-driver Playoff grid, and he holds a two-point advantage over Chandler Smith for the final slot with two races remaining in the Round of 10.

Kaden Honeycutt, who also had a rough afternoon, exits Darlington as the final driver in the Playoff standings, and he sits seven points below the cutline.

Next up for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series is the UNOH 200 presented by Ohio Logistics at Bristol Motor Speedway on Thursday, September 11. That race will be televised on FS1 with coverage set to kick off at 8:00 PM ET. The NASCAR Radio Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of the event.