FORT WORTH, Texas — A tale of two cities transpired on pit road as the checkered flag flew on the SpeedyCash.com 25o from Texas Motor Speedway on Friday night. With Corey Heim standing tall, victorious at the start/finish line, Ben Rhodes and Daniel Hemric were left with mixed emotions after the final restart in NASCAR Overtime.
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Rhodes restarted on the outside front row on the final restart on Lap 172 and held pace with Heim, who had the dominant truck all night, leading 96 of the 174 total laps.
Heading into Turn 3, coming to the white flag, there was slight contact between the two front-runners, pushing the No. 99 of Rhodes up the race track and leaving the door open for the No. 19 of Daniel Hemric to charge to the bottom, making it three-wide at the white flag.
When the race was all said and done, neither Hemric nor Rhodes would wind up in Victory Lane, with the No. 11 of Heim taking home the win. Exiting his ThorSport Racing in frustration, Rhodes said he felt he was raced unfairly and had no room to challenge for victory at the end.
“I think we got used up by the 11 being on the outside line with clean air on both of our noses,” Rhodes said on pit road post-race. “He just decided to run us up the track and out of the groove at both ends of the track. So on the last restart, you know, we’re in three and four. We’re coming back around to the white; he runs me way high. We both have to lift, pretty unacceptable, in my opinion, because, you know, we could have wrecked there.
“So, you know, I’m not gonna cry about it, but it just stinks when you have a good opportunity to win a race and then you get run a little dirty. But you know, I know how it is with him, and he’s got his third win of the season. We’re still looking for our first right now, so when you have these opportunities, you need to seize them, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Parked one spot ahead of the two-time Craftsman Truck Series champion on pit road was the runner-up finisher, Hemric, who was able to capitalize on the Heim-Rhodes scrap to maneuver his Chevrolet to the inside of the two and have a shot at the win entering Turn 1.
“I knew when they got side by side I’d have a big run,” Hemric said. “I didn’t know if I have enough pure tire capability left to make the move, and kind of created just enough angle to get left of the 11 to get three-wide at the bottom, just didn’t have enough left to make it stick through one and two.”
“So either way, we were not good when we started. (Crew chief) Josh Graham did the exceptional job of tuning on me correctly, in the right direction, and yeah, ultimately found ourselves with the opportunity and stayed quite close.”
Close it was, as the Kannapolis, North Carolina native had a shot on the final lap to punch his ticket to Victory Lane for the second time this season. At the end of the night, that is all Hemric could ask for out of his No. 19 McAnally-Hilgemann Racing team.
“Just trying to win,” Hemric said. “That’s what this team deserves. That’s what everyone on this No. 19 team deserves. I feel like, you know, we put so much into this deal, and we overcame some adjustments and stuff that we had to go through at the beginning of the race. You’ve got to go for the win. That’s what we did. Came up short, but great execution today.”
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