RICHMOND, Va. — Whenever Sam Hunt Racing shows up to Richmond Raceway, there’s an added incentive to perform well. Team owner Sam Hunt is a Richmond native and attended college four miles down the road at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Nearly three years ago, when John Hunter Nemechek scored the team’s first top-five finish, it also came out the .75-mile track. On that warm fall day, tears were shed and hugs were given. Kaz Grala also tallied a top five at Richmond last spring, running inside the top 10 for the majority of the race.
Fast forward to now, Hunt expects his core No. 26 Toyota to perform well at Richmond. Having scaled back to just one full-time team for the 2024 season which features a rotation of drivers, Toyota prospect Corey Heim got the nod for Saturday’s ToyotaCare 250. It was his third start of the season.
Heim backed up his impressive top-five starting spot at Phoenix Raceway earlier this month with a sixth-place effort on Saturday morning. From the drop of the green flag, he uninterruptedly moved forward, taking the lead from Justin Allgaier on Lap 43. He would pace the field for the next 14 laps.
With a late caution in the opening stage, Heim dropped to third in the running order, behind a dominant Aric Almirola and Brennan Poole, who pitted for fresh tires. Heim scored fifth-place stage points during the second stage as well, despite having to overcome a slow pit stop which cost the No. 26 Toyota valuable track position.
“As long as you have speed, you know that you‘re capable of doing big things,” Heim said. “The rest of it is cleaning up the variables. I feel like track position was the name of the game — especially late.”
Another slow pit stop plagued Heim at the end of the second stage, sinking to the teens to begin the final stage. Once again, Heim powered through the field and, when a caution flew with 67 laps remaining, he was among 11 cars to pit and put on his final set of sticker tires.
When the race resumed, Heim made quick work of his competition, following Chandler Smith and Almirola through the field. He eventually settled into third, but was passed late in the going by Taylor Gray, who was making his series debut for Joe Gibbs Racing.
Heim took the checkered flag in fourth, his first top-five finish in his young Xfinity Series career.
“When we were able to qualify good and run up front and save tires with the top guys, I felt like I could step up on the long run and get the speed we needed to lead laps and potentially win the race,” Heim said of his 250-lap race. “I feel like we‘ve made so much progress in such a small amount of time at Sam Hunt Racing. I feel like we‘ve got a lot of forward momentum and hopefully, we can get them at Martinsville.”
Instead of celebrating another top-five finish, Hunt was calm on pit road following the race. His excitement level was still high, but at times throughout the race, he thought there was more potential in the No. 26 Toyota.
“We needed to just execute and get a finish,” Hunt stated. “We have been really fast all year and haven‘t closed the races out. I felt like we maybe had the best car today and weren‘t clean enough on pit road. I think we had to use too much tire the last run just trying to get track position back.
“I‘m really encouraged because we‘ve got good racecars right now. It‘s good to be frustrated with fourth, that‘s a new area that I‘m living in.”
Up next for the Xfinity Series is Martinsville Speedway where Heim will return to the seat of the No. 26 car. The last time he competed at the track was in the Craftsman Truck Series race last spring, holding off Kyle Busch for the victory in a rain-shortened race.
