By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
A wildly eventful night in Bristol Motor Speedway for the Craftsman Truck Series hit a high note when leaders Christian Eckes and Corey Heim made contact during a late restart.
Eckes, who led the most laps on the night (132) from second on the grid, was leading the field when Heim gave his No. 91 a bump and run for the top spot.
Heim was going for the $500,000 Triple Truck Challenge.
And as they exited Turn 4 seconds after the contact, Eckes turned into Heim’s right-rear corner, hooking his truck to the left and sparking a hard crash that swallowed up pole-sitter Kaden Honeycutt and Layne Riggs.
“[Heim and team] deserve to win half a million bucks tonight and I took that away from them,” Eckes said. “Obviously, it wasn’t intentional to spin or even hit him. I was just trying to get in line and misjudged it and ended up wrecking him pretty hard.”
Eckes avoided damage in the chaos, saying Heim may have played a part in the misjudgment of space heading into Turn 1.
“I wanted to get behind him to race him and maybe re-pay the favor,” he admitted. “But no intention of getting into him and spinning him.
“I’m sure he was dragging the brake a little to keep me outside of him. Still, I shouldn’t have turned in until I knew I was completely clear. I feel terrible about that.”
The ensuing restarts saw Eckes lose the lead to race-winner Christopher Bell before falling back to fifth place at the line.
“I lost the handling a little bit and track position is so important,” he said. “I screwed up the restart pretty bad. As I said, a lot of mental decisions that I have to make better.”
Despite the drama, Eckes was proud of the night after scoring his third top-five finish of 2026.
“It was a step in the right direction for sure,” he said. “We’re bringing fast trucks. We qualified second, qualifying has bene an issue for the last couple weeks. I feel like we’re heading in the right direction there, just have to clean up mistakes.