While the 10-driver NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series Playoff field does not deny Regular Season Champion Corey Heim \u2013 a series-best seven-time race winner \u2013 certainly holds a commanding presence in the 2025 title run, his competition says it is ready to be put to the championship test.<\/p>\n
All 10 of the championship-eligible drivers \u2013 Heim, Layne Riggs, Chandler Smith, Daniel Hemric, Tyler Ankrum, defending series champ Ty Majeski, Grant Enfinger, Rajah Caruth, Kaden Honeycutt and Jake Garcia \u2013 met with the media Tuesday in advance of the seven-race Playoff run that begins Aug. 30 at the historic Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.<\/p>\n
Heim\u2019s competitors all conceded he\u2019s having a season for the ages and carries an enviable \u201cfavorite\u201d tag into the championship run. But starting at Darlington, all bets are off.<\/p>\n
And the 23-year-old TRICON Garage driver, Heim, says he\u2019s ready to hoist the champion\u2019s trophy after being favored previously only to finish third (2023) and runner-up (2024) the last two seasons.<\/p>\n
The driver of the No. 11 TRICON Garage Toyota has led 1,125 laps on the year \u2013 nearly double his previous single season total and almost 900 more laps than anyone else in the series. He has the seven wins, but also 12 top-five finishes in the 18-race regular season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the main thing for us is that we\u2019ve really connected a lot of the dots on maybe the prior struggles we\u2019ve had so far and got a lot of things to improve in the Playoffs still regardless as far as keeping that going or keeping the momentum going,\u201d said Heim, the only multi-time Regular Season Champion in series history, who has earned a huge 62-point lead over Front Row Motorsports driver Layne Riggs going into the Playoff run.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like for me, there was some struggle areas last year that kind of lingered throughout the year and we never quite got past that. But we were able to hone in on that in the offseason and sort of clear those up as far as maybe some packages that we brought to specific race tracks that didn\u2019t work, and maybe some pit road stuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy personal development as far as my driving style at some places. I feel like just within my 11 team and within TRICON and Toyota, we\u2019ve done a great job of just honing in on the things that maybe didn\u2019t work throughout the year and lingered and just kind of fixing that for 2025 and hoping to extend that into the Playoffs as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heim\u2019s amazing season statistics are not un-noticed by his competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 11-truck is in his own zip code most weekends,\u201d said Front Row Motorsports\u2019 Smith, a two-race winner this season and ranked third entering the Playoff stretch.<\/p>\n
Even so \u2013 and not surprisingly \u2013 every single driver said Tuesday he was prepared to give Heim a run for his money.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, there\u2019s a lot of pressure, but I feel like I\u2019m ready for it,\u201d said Riggs, driver of the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford, adding, \u201cNo Hail Marys in the Playoffs, that\u2019s the goal for us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the 10-driver NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series Playoff field does not deny Regular Season Champion Corey Heim \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[9851,31139,10136,9432,28924,6814,425,562,99,20340,65257],"class_list":["post-96560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-craftsman-truck-series","tag-daniel-hemric","tag-ford","tag-front-row-motorsports","tag-grant-enfinger","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-series","tag-sports","tag-toyota","tag-tyler-ankrum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}