Carson Hocevar’s race started in the pits with a flat tire even before the green flag for Saturday night’s Worldwide Express 250 at Richmond (Va.) Raceway and ended with a celebration in Victory Lane.
The 20-year-old driver of the No. 42 Niece Motorsports Chevrolet passed the night’s most dominant driver, Ty Majeski, with only three laps remaining thanks to pit road strategy and a fast Chevy Silverado to claim his third win of the season by 2.308s.
“We didn’t come here to run second,’’ Hocevar said, adding, “I knew we had to do something different and new tires prevailed.’’
Corey Heim officially secured the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series 2023 regular season championship with a third-place finish in the opening stage. The 21-year old driver of the No. 11 TRICON Garage Toyota will start the seven-race Playoff portion of the season with an important 15-point bonus thanks to an incredible run to the regular season title that included a pair of wins. He finished sixth on Saturday – his series best 13th top-10 finish in 16 races.
“It really means a lot,’’ Heim said. “With TRICON Garage and Toyota Racing coming such a long way from the beginning of the year, I really felt like we had a lot of progress to make in the first four or five weeks and we’ve really been improving ever since.
“Tonight, it was a rough night at Richmond. It is kind of a unique race track. On the normal tracks, we’ve been really consistent. Still a good finish for us, but definitely want to do better leading into the Playoffs.”
After earning his second pole position of the season, Majeski absolutely dominated much of the race, sweeping both stage wins for the first time in his career and leading a dominating 168 of the 250 laps in the No. 98 ThorSport Racing Ford. His truck was so good Saturday that he even overcame a mid-race pit stop speeding penalty to regain the lead late race and try to hold off Hocevar. Majeski stayed out while Hocevar pitted for tires with 40 laps remaining, however, and was ultimately unable to hold off the fresh tires in the closing laps.