How the Talladega NASCAR Truck race was won and lost

In a straight up race, it didn’t seem like anyone had the same speed as Tricon Garage but the rest of the field also made it really easy for Gio Ruggiero and Corey Heim to decide the race amongst themselves regardless.

Ruggiero, a Truck Series rookie, led the most laps from the pole but lost the lead on a restart with 15 laps to go as Ben Rhodes took the lead with a push from ThorSport Racing teammate Luke Fenhaus.

Approaching the white flag, the shoves became more aggressive on both lines, until it finally bit someone -- the ThorSport teammate. Rhodes got a shove from Fenhaus that he couldn’t handle and a second bump sent them both around with two laps to go.

The stage is set for the NASCAR Truck Series championship cutoff

Inheriting the lead was Ruggiero, who defended the lead masterfully ahead of Heim, over the course of a two-lap green-white-checkered finish. And no, Heim didn’t really cut Ruggiero a break of any kind.

“I think he did everything right, to be honest with you,” Heim said. “I mean, I might have been more aggressive and tried to stick the side draft if it were anyone else but a Toyota teammate but I think he did a really good.”

His push came from Ty Majeski, who was damaged in a crash earlier in the day.

“With the damaged 98 behind us, that didn’t do us any favors you know, not having as much help as you normally get but my priority was to get us both clear. I didn’t have the surge to make a serious run so I peeked out and kind of got to his bumper and he defended it well -- did a really good job.”

For his part, Ruggiero felt confident that it was his teammate behind him, instead of looking at it like cause for concern that the winner of 10 races this season was the one trying to topple him.

“I was relieved when I saw him in the mirror because I knew he would give me a good push,” Ruggiero said.

Heim congratulated Ruggiero in Victory Lane while everyone else involved in the finish was left to contemplate what went wrong.

For his part, Rhodes is still seeking his first Talladega win despite leading approaching the finish three different occasions and failing to make it to the line in each of these occasions.

“Yeah, multiple times this has occurred,” Rhodes said. “Maybe I’m just saying this but I do feel like more often that not a super speedway, we’re always in contention, whether we’re first, second or third, leading one of the three lanes, and yeah, we’re doing this again …

“Whether it’s the backstretch or coming out of Turn 2 or whatever, we get a really ill-timed or bad push and this was just a really aggressive push coming on the exit of the corner. The truck was flatting out, coming out of the race track.

“There was no load to hold me and the bumpers don’t match up properly, right? So a lot of it was bad timing but up to that point, I was getting really good pushes and we were controlling the race.”

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Rhodes just wishes Fenhaus had just better judged his pushes, and to be fair, this was the first time the latter had driven one of these races.

And he immediately second guessed it too.

“I felt like we were pushing and then we got off of each other and then I was getting pushed by (Tanner Gray) and then felt like I was darty, then I got back into (Rhodes) and then we were within inches at the time that I think he got loose.

“I wasn’t into him but I eventually did get into him and that’s what finished it off.”

Fenhause repeatedly expressed remorse to his teammates and looked forward to debriefing to learn what he could do better.

“I just wish I could have backed off more but I didn’t know where (Ruggiero) and (Heim) were with their pushes and if I didn’t stay connected, it’s really hard to break the bubble to get back to him.”

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