INDIANAPOLIS MOTOR SPEEDWAY (Indianapolis) — Restart time appears to be Heim Time.
Corey Heim diced his way to the lead on a restart with 35 laps remaining and then held off the best of the best to capture the Brickyard 400 for his second career victory.
Heim, who is running a part-time schedule with 23XI Racing, has just eight starts this year and has won two huge races this summer — the road-course race at Naval Base Coronado and then on the hallowed grounds of Indianapolis.
“I’m pretty out of breath,” Heim said after exiting his car on the TNT telecast. “That was a workout. It was a dream come true. Winning at the Brickyard? That’s unbelievable.”
Here are my takeaways:
1. Restart Key To Heim Win
Heim got a push from Joey Logano to jump out to the lead on the restart while the line of Denny Hamlin-Christopher Bell-Chase Briscoe couldn’t coordinate their push well enough. It cost Hamlin four spots as he dropped to sixth while Bell was able to get to second.
“Pushing is the name of the game, and Briscoe let me know he was going to push me, but he got on me way early, and then it was pushing me into Denny — and then Denny is on the binders trying to not get a penalty [for jumping the restart],” Bell told me after the race.
“The three of us just did not execute the restart very well. Fortunately, it worked out for me. Denny’s probably not going to be very happy.”
After that, it was just up to Heim to first throw a block on Hamlin and then to hold off Bell, Joey Logano, Briscoe and Hamlin. And he did just that.
“[Hamlin] has every right to be a little bit frustrated with me,” Heim said. “He probably would have done the same thing.”
Corey Heim is taking the Cup Series by storm despite limited starts.
2. Hamlin Left To Wonder
Christopher Bell was right that Denny Hamlin wasn’t pleased.
“It’s really more on us and the 20 [of Bell] and the 19 [of Briscoe] of just not orchestrating good pushes there,” Hamlin said in his TNT interview after the race. “We came detached at the wrong time.”
Hamlin saw the win slip away, which couldn’t have been a good feeling even if he is the co-owner of 23XI Racing, which has now won back-to-back Brickyard 400s with Heim and Bubba Wallace last year.
“That’s how you lose them,” Hamlin said. “These restarts, when everyone kind of knows when you’re going to go, it’s about the pushes.
“That’s essentially where I got the lead from [Heim] the restart before. Just came back the other way around.”
Denny Hamlin didn’t execute as he would have liked on a pivotal restart.
3. Larson’s Indy Crashout
Kyle Larson looked like he was going to have control early in the race, but he blew a left rear tire just when he was about to take the lead on Lap 44.
The Hendrick Motorsports driver had no warning, and it was another sour end at a track that has been more sour than joy (except for his 2024 Brickyard 400 win).
“It’s obviously disappointing,” Larson told me and other reporters after exiting the track’s medical center. “You go from 10th to the lead on a good start and then race strategy — we set ourselves up well to gain a lot of points there and also set ourselves up to maintain that track position the rest of the race.
“It’s a bummer, but that’s just part of racing.”
A tire issue ruined Kyle Larson’s day at The Brickyard.
4. Gilliland Wins Million Bucks
Todd Gilliland finished 24th to win the $1 million in-season tournament, a bracket-based head-to-head challenge within the last five races.
The Front Row Motorsports driver got to celebrate as his opponent, Ryan Blaney, got caught up in an accident and finished 26th.
“My heart was pounding those last 25 laps,” Gilliland said. “It was me, the 16 [of AJ Allmendinger] and the 12 [of Blaney]. … I still feel like we kind of earned it coming down the stretch.
“The biggest thing for me that was really cool through this whole process was seeing how my team really elevated themselves, really grabbed another gear.”
Blaney wasn’t thrilled, as he told the TNT broadcast after John Hunter Nemechek apologized to him for the contact that triggered the wreck: “He apologized and said he didn’t mean to do it. It still happened. … It’s a shame it ended that way.”
Todd Gilliland is $1 million richer after winning the in-season tournament.
4 ½. Off Week Before Iowa
The NASCAR Cup Series has its second and final off weekend since the start of the regular season before getting back into action at the 0.875-mile Iowa Speedway oval.
It is another short track and part of a string of short-track races with 0.75-mile Richmond and 1-mile New Hampshire following Iowa.
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