2025 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Awards

The 2025 Craftsman Truck Series featured 25 races — the most since 2009 — and ended with Corey Heim earning his first series championship in dominant fashion.

NASCAR’s end-of-season awards banquet may have been held on Nov. 4 in Scottsdale, Ariz., but there are still awards from Frontstretch to hand out. From the best finishes, the best comebacks, the best soundbites and more, here are the pivotal races and moments that defined the 2025 season.

Read all of Frontstretch‘s content looking back on 2025 here

Driver of the Year

Is there any doubt about this one?

Heim put together what might be the greatest season in the 31-year history of the series. He had 12 wins at 12 different tracks, breaking Greg Biffle’s single-season record of nine in 1999. Heim had an absurd 19 top-three finishes, including 11 consecutive to close out the year. He led a whopping 1,627 laps, surpassing Mike Skinner’s former record of 1,533 set in 1996. Heim became the first driver in the history of NASCAR’s top three series to lead laps in every race of a season, and with an average finish of fifth in 25 races, he put together the best average result of a series champion since Ron Hornaday Jr. in 1996.

Those were decades-old records that were put together by the greatest drivers to ever grace the series, and Heim laid waste to all of them in a year when he outscored second place by almost 300 points (equivalent to a five entire races) across the full season.

In his first year with TRICON Garage in 2023, Heim won three races. In 2024, he doubled that total to six. He doubled it again in 2025 with 12, and his win at Phoenix Raceway was the cherry on top to the most legendary Truck season in years.

In typical 2025 fashion, Heim had the best truck and led 78 of the race’s 134 laps. It seemed likely that he would cruise win after passing Ross Chastain for the lead with 31 laps to go, but 10 laps later, the engine of Heim’s No. 11 truck briefly shut off.

The hiccup cost Heim a few seconds on the track, and he suddenly found himself in third after dominating. But with Chastain and Layne Riggs vying for the top spot, Heim had the power to run them down, and he retook the lead from Chastain with 12 to go.

Heim ran away from second-place Riggs in the waning laps, but disaster struck once again with four to go, and Heim’s second engine sputter dropped him to third and out of contention for good. Riggs now had the lead, but it didn’t last for long, as Kyle Larson — who spun and dropped out of the top 20 just 40 laps prior — blew right by him with two to go to complete the improbable comeback in a final green-flag run where the lead changed hands four times between four different drivers in the final 13 laps.

Comeback of the Year

Larson’s late-race comeback at Homestead was impressive, but it wasn’t quite on the same level as Heim’s, who sustained significant damage in a lap-one, turn-1 incident at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL after starting on the pole.

Heim dropped outside the top 30 while the No. 11 crew repaired the truck as best it could. And in shades of Chase Elliott at the ROVAL in 2019, Heim drove through the entire field with a beat-up truck and reclaimed second in the final stage.

He came within a half-second of leader and TRICON teammate Brent Crews, who had controlled the race ever since that first-lap collision. With three laps to go, it appeared that Crews would win his first Truck race while Heim’s comeback would come up one spot short. But as fate would have it, another TRICON truck in Toni Breidinger stalled on track with three laps to go to force overtime.

Crews pitted under caution with fuel concerns, while Heim and the No. 11 team rolled the dice by taking track position and the race lead. Staying out proved to the right call, as Crews got hung up in traffic while Heim scooted away with clean track to his record-setting 10th win of 2025 and his fifth-consecutive victory on a road course.

Crews had to settle for second, while eventual Rookie of the Year Gio Ruggiero finished third to complete the first-ever 1-2-3 sweep for TRICON.

The Wait Is Over Awards

Even with Heim winning just under half the schedule, the 2025 season still saw a handful of drivers break through and end long droughts. Stewart Friesen, for instance, won in overtime at Michigan International Speedway for his first Truck win in more than three years.

But the biggest at-long-last moments of 2025 belonged to McAnally-Hilgemann Racing teammates Daniel Hemric and Tyler Ankrum.

Hemric returned to the Truck Series full time for the first time since 2016, and it had been more than three years since he won the race and NASCAR Xfinity Series championship at Phoenix in 2021. In more than a decade of competing in NASCAR’s top three series, Phoenix remained the only win to his name despite several close calls.

But that all changed in March, as Hemric passed Ankrum with four laps to go at Martinsville to score his first Truck win and finally return to victory lane.

Ankrum, who had last won as an 18-year-old rookie at Kentucky Speedway in 2019, got his turn two races later at Rockingham Speedway, as he stretched his fuel to earn his second Truck win and end his 130-race winless drought, the longest in series history.

Tough Luck Award

Parker Kligerman was initially the fourth driver to end a lengthy winless drought by winning the season opener at Daytona International Speedway in for his first Truck win since 2022.

With Kligerman mere feet away from the white flag and his first Xfinity win at the Charlotte ROVAL in 2024, only to finish sixth in overtime after a controversial yellow flag, Daytona was a bounce-back victory for Kligerman, and the triumph gave the small, part-time Henderson Motorsports team its second Truck win.

But the feel-good story only lasted a few hours, as Kligerman was stripped of the win after failing post-race inspection. The team exhausted all its appeals to no avail, and second-place finisher Heim was awarded the win with Kligerman’s DQ.

Sadly, team owner Charlie Henderson died a few months later in June, but the team has continued to race in his honor. Kligerman finally earned a Daytona win in the Xfinity race later that summer, albeit in a substitute role for Connor Zilisch.

But Friesen’s 2025 season camed to an abrupt end in July, as he was seriously injured in a dirt modified accident at Autodromo Drummondville in Quebec on July 28.

Friesen underwent surgery for fractures in his right leg and pelvis three days later, and while still he has a long road to recovery, he was healthy enough to return to track, albeit in a non-racing capacity, at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Sept. 20.

Kaden Honeycutt took the wheel of Friesen’s No. 52 truck for the final eight races of the season, scored a best finish of second at Martinsville and led the team to a third-place finish in the owners’ championship after finishing third behind Ty Majeski and Heim at Phoenix.

For Friesen, the hope is to be back the behind the wheel of the No. 52 at Daytona for the start of the 2026.

Interview of the Year

The interview of the year came in the final race at Phoenix from Matt Crafton, the three-time Truck champion who retired from full-time racing at the conclusion of 2025 after 15 wins, 25 full-time seasons (24 with ThorSport Racing) and a record 592 consecutive starts dating back to 2000.

He’ll back for occasional starts going forward, but Crafton’s post-race interview to the media made the rounds after expressing frustration with his “terrible” performance at Phoenix and his disdain for the changes in the series that have — on 1.5-mile tracks in particular — put more emphasis on equipment than driver skill, he says.

Paint Scheme of the Year

Typically, the paint scheme of the race or the paint scheme of the year is awarded to a one-off special livery that truly knocked it out of the park.

And while those certainly deserve praise, I’m going to switch it up and award the title to a paint scheme we frequently saw throughout the season and in victory lane: Heim’s Safelite No. 11.

#11: Corey Heim, TRICON Garage, Safelite Toyota Tundra (Photo: NKP)

Why this paint scheme over the rest? For one, it’s an objectively beautiful truck, and the mix of red, white and black dazzles. Safelite’s trucks in years past have put an emphasis on black or white with a touch of red, so 2025 marked the first year that red was the true primarily color, and Safelite hit a homerun with it.

Second, it’s going in the history books as one of the most iconic schemes in series history. Safelite was on the hood for 10 of Heim’s 12 wins, and the red-and-white Safelite truck pictured above scored eight checkered flags (the blue-and-white Safelite + Foster Love truck scored two).

A red-and-white No. 11 truck on the starting grid always spelt trouble for the rest of the field, and it wins paint scheme of the year because it will be forever linked with victory, dominance and a record-breaking year.

NASCAR Content Director at Frontstretch

Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote “4 Burning Questions” for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.

Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf