Information By: TOYOTA RACING – HOMESTEAD, FL – TRICON Garage driver Corey Heim was made available to the media on Friday after winning the pole position for the NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
COREY HEIM, No. 11 Safelite Toyota Tundra TRD Pro, TRICON Garage
Can you take us through your pole-winning lap?
“Yeah, it was a good day for us. We’ve been so successful on these intermediate tracks in this 2024 campaign for TRICON Garage. (I’m) Always excited to get back to Homestead. It’s a driver’s favorite (track), including me and many others. So, (I) have high hopes coming into this race with our intermediate program being so good with TRICON and Homestead being another of those. It’s obviously paid off so far, just need to follow up with a win tomorrow. That’s the goal, but always satisfied with our TRICON Garage guys. Our Safelite Tundra TRD Pro was good today.”
What have you learned about yourself over the course of this season?
“Yeah, it’s been a year of ups and downs, but I’ve been fortunate to be a part of a great organization in TRICON (Garage) and having a career year for myself. We’ve doubled our win total from last year and quite frankly, just been the Truck to beat for most weeks and (throughout) the year. Being with those guys and learning from them and what makes them so good and just appreciating being a part of a winning race team is the first thing. But you mentioned the lows. I’ve definitely had my fair share of bad races this year. Last year, we prided ourselves on consistency, and this year has been more of a rocky road. But, at the end of the day, it’s going to come down to one race if we can make the Championship 4 in Phoenix. To answer your question on what I’ve learned about myself, it’s just to keep my head held high and take it one week at a time as you know. Certainly, can’t take these opportunities for granted and keep moving forward.”
How did you make up so much ground from practice to qualifying?
“Yeah, that’s a good question. We fired off not exactly where we wanted to be but last year, we were really good on the long runs here. So, just wanted to run the practice out and (we) progressively got better and better. I feel like we were in the top-five in 20-to-30-lap averages, I don’t know if we ran up to 30, but I assume we were pretty far up there the longer you go. So, just kept my head up and had faith the truck would come in, which it did, and we made some really good qualifying adjustments. Last year, I didn’t qualify as well as I had hoped to for this race, so (we) worked on it a lot the past couple weeks to prepare for it and it paid off.”