For the 26th time in his young NASCAR career, Corey Heim was raising his arms in celebration of a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series win on Saturday afternoon at Michigan International Speedway.
Heim, who claimed his third win of the season in the DQS Solutions & Staffing 250, was able to get around Carson Hocevar for the lead with 15 laps remaining, and in the closing laps he held off Kaden Honeycutt, his hard-charging TRICON Garage teammate.
Race Results: 2026 NCTS DQS Solutions & Staffing 250 At Michigan
Incredibly, Heim is carrying a 27.7% winning percentage 94 races into his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series career. There’s no denying that he’s ready for the NASCAR Cup Series, and as we found out last week, he’ll finally go full-time in NASCAR’s top division in 2027, driving for 23XI Racing.
While Heim, who is running a part-time schedule in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series this season, isn’t eligible to make ‘The Chase’, Honeycutt, the runner-up finisher, is. The runner-up driver in the championship standings, who finished second in the race, was not pleased after climbing from his truck.
Honeycutt wouldn’t reveal why he was upset, but it’s likely due to consistently finishing runner-up this season.
“I don’t know,” Honeycutt stated when pressed on why he was frustrated following the race. “I just want to thank TRICON, this whole 11 team, Safelite, Scott Zipadelli did a great job getting adjustments all day. Had a really good restart to get us up there and in contention once all the strategy and stuff kicked in, but yeah, we’ve got stuff to clean up on our end, for sure. I’m just going to leave it at that.”
Much like Honeycutt, Carson Hocevar, a full-time NASCAR Cup Series competitor, was also left with heartbreak at the end of Saturday’s race in the Irish Hills.
Hocevar, who is a native Michigander, led a race-high 65 laps and desperately wanted to win on his home turf. However, a piece of debris lodged into his front grille, causing his truck to overheat in the closing laps, and robbed his No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet Silverado of precious horsepower.
“It just sucks that we didn’t close it out there,” Hocevar said. “I felt like I could have done a better job, but I don’t know what I could have done differently, yet. I would have liked to see what I would have had full-power, obviously. Yeah, it just sucks. There’s a lot of family here, and my mom’s birthday and everything. There’s a lot of reasons to want to win here at Michigan.”
Layne Riggs, the series point leader, saw his two-race winning streak snapped on Saturday afternoon, but he continued his torrid pace with a fourth-place finish. Chandler Smith, his Front Row Motorsports teammate, would finish in fifth.
Christopher Bell, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Connor Mosack, Jake Garcia, and Tyler Ankrum would round out the top-10 finishers in the race.
Cleetus McFarland, making his second career NASCAR Truck Series start, suffered a spin in the race, but was able to come home with a 25th-place finish, a much better result than his series debut at Daytona, which saw him crash less than 10 laps into that race.
