Corey Heim outlasts madness in Mid-Ohio Trucks

Will Rodgers, a road course ace in NASCAR‘s regional series, was not a happy man following Saturday’s Craftsman Truck Series race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, taking to Twitter to write, “When you race around idiots, you get raced like an idiot… this series and 2/3 of the drivers in it are a joke. I made plenty of mistakes myself, but I never took anyone out, intentionally or unintentionally. Just ridiculous.”

Rodgers’ grievances stemmed from a late wreck with Austin Wayne Self, one of ten cautions that flew during the day. Much of the field, on the younger and inexperienced side as the Truck Series is the entry into NASCAR’s national divisions, struggled in rainy conditions as early as the pace laps as various trucks spun. This lasted into simply taking the green flag as evidenced by Jake Garcia going off course as he tried to catch up with the grid taking off, and a yellow flag was quickly flown to re-organise as Garcia and Jack Wood went around.

The chaos in the weather prompted NASCAR to switch to single-file restarts, a strategy also employed at the Chicago Street Race by the Cup Series a week prior.

As those around him went off course or were facing the wrong way, Corey Heim remained calm as he led 30 of 67 laps to win from the pole. The victory is his second of 2023 after Martinsville in April.

“If I ride around when it was wet and not overstep and lose the track position we had from the start, I knew we would be in a good position when we ended the race in the dry. That was the case,” said Heim. “Thankfully, I made minimal mistakes; I made a couple that cost me a few spots but nothing that was chastrophic for our finish. We were able to keep that top-five track position and sure enough, when it dried out, we were the fastest track and we were able to drive to the front.”

A pair of IndyCar veterans finished next to each other as Conor Daly placed eighteenth ahead of Marco Andretti‘s nineteenth. Andretti was making his Truck début.

The race had been delayed due to lightning.

Race results