Ben Rhodes survives to win 2023 NASCAR Truck Series championship

As an inebriated Ben Rhodes remarked to the press that dinosaurs did not exist (thanks to a bet with his friend Chase Cabre), Carson Hocevar and Corey Heim were hoping they could throw the other into the jaws of one.

Heim, the regular season champion, mathematically could have clinched the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title before Friday’s season finale at Phoenix Raceway under a season-long points system. With the existence of the playoff format, however, he had to hold off Hocevar, Rhodes, and Grant Enfinger.

All of this came to naught when Heim was spun by Hocevar on lap 121. While Heim was not eliminated from contention, his retaliation twenty laps later triggered a series of events that ended the season in virtual disaster. On lap 148, while Enfinger was holding the championship lead with just three laps remaining, Heim pulled in front of Hocevar and forced him into the wall, ending the latter’s title hopes.

Hocevar apologised for the initial contact. While the young driver proved his mettle in a breakout 2023 campaign, he has also developed a reputation for an aggressive driving style. As such, he conceded that he couldn’t “sit here and say I didn’t mean to, but I just fucked up. I just messed up. I was just trying really hard, blocking, doing everything I could, I just tried to slow him down, and I just messed up.”

Heim suffered damage that knocked him back but the ensuing chaos in overtime allowed him to salvage an eighteenth-place finish. While stressing that the second wreck was not intentional, he was not keen on accepting Hocevar’s remorse.

“I’ve been racing Carson for a long time, racing him since I was eight or nine years old, and that’s just kind of what he does. He’ll wreck you and apologise, and then he’ll do it again the next week,” Heim stated. “It’s not going to be the last time he does it, and it’s certainly not the first time he’s done it. Known him for a long time, and I know a lot of guys have only known him for four years as far as his racing career, but it’s been a decade on top of that.”

With Hocevar and Heim, arguably the top two drivers in 2023, no longer threats, Enfinger and Rhodes had to survive overtime. Despite being in position to win the title in GMS Racing‘s final race, a poor restart sent Enfinger backwards and he fell out of the top twenty before Derek Kraus wrecked to set up another overtime.

Rhodes ensured none of the Championship Round drivers escaped Phoenix with a clean truck when he clipped Zane Smith on the next restart and spun him into Jack Wood. Despite the damage, his truck was still able to continue while Enfinger remained too far back to catch him. Enfinger’s glimmer of hope seemingly grew when Rhodes’ ThorSport Racing team-mates Ty Majeski and Matt Crafton were then caught up in another accident to begin the third overtime.

Despite restarting thirteenth for the fourth overtime, Enfinger gave chase before catching up to Rhodes for fifth. After navigating past Dean Thompson for sixth coming to the finish, his Hail Mary overtake on Rhodes in turn four failed and the latter held on for his second championship.

“Didn’t see this one coming,” commented Enfinger, who now enters free agency. “I thought you for sure had to win the race tonight to win this championship, and then it was just a matter of survival. We, all four, had destroyed trucks at the end.

“I don’t know what I would do different. It’s just an unfortunate way to kind of send out GMS Racing. We had the championship there in grasp with three to go and just kind of went away. I don’t really know if I’d have done anything different.”

Meanwhile, Rhodes secured ThorSport’s fifth championship after his 2021 crown and Crafton’s three in 2013, 2014, and 2019. Like his first title, he showed up to the post-race conference drunk on alcohol: he drank his and crew chief Rich Lushes‘ champagne out of his shoe—which he recalled were “a real litre and a half, a European”—followed by Bud Light.

“Christian Eckes (race winner) came up to me before the race and said, ‘Hey, you’re looking good, man. Those other guys, they’re just shaking. They’re scared. They’re shaking.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s cool. I don’t know really know what to think about that,'” a hammered Rhodes quipped. “It feels normal. We’ve been doing this like three years in a row now. It feels normal. I’m glad we’re here, but I didn’t really think nothing of it. I just thought we’ve got to run our own race.

“The thing that was disturbing to me was running second to Corey and he’s driving away at the start of the race. I knew there would be late-race cautions, I just didn’t know there would be like a billion of them. Is that the right number, a billion?”

While not necessarily a billion, the race ended with ten cautions excluding stage breaks and even featured a red flag that spanned nearly twelve minutes. This resulted in the race lasting over two and a half hours; at 2:30:42, it was the longest oval race in Truck Series history and fourteen minutes shy of the 2021 Daytona Road Course event for the longest in the series overall. Coincidentally, Rhodes also won that race en route to his first championship.

The litany of accidents prompted many fans and even Cup Series drivers to criticise the field for their poor conduct. Daniel Dye was not medically cleared for Saturday’s Xfinity Series race after being caught up in a crash on lap 131 that necessitated the red flag for cleanup, prompting his Xfinity team owner Tommy Joe Martins to describe the race as the “most embarrassing display of driving I’ve ever seen.” Tyler Reddick called Hocevar a “dumbass” and added he “will never learn” following the Heim spin, while Chris Buescher lamented the “pitiful lack of sportsmanship.”

“This is what happens when there’s no rules, no officiating,” wrote Denny Hamlin. “You get a product like this. ‘The show’ has taken over US Motorsports and why it’s hard to take seriously.”

To add insult to an already chaotic night, the restart zone was incorrectly moved up by NASCAR for the Truck race. It was amended in time for Xfinity and Cup.

Amidst the championship and other race drama, Eckes led a McAnally-Hilgemann Racing 1–2 finish with Jake Garcia in tow; the victory was Eckes’ fourth of the season while Garcia wraps up his MHR tenure with the best run of his rookie season. Chase Purdy placed third in the final event for Kyle Busch Motorsports.

Race results

Finish	Start	Number	Driver	Team	Manufacturer	Laps	Status
1	8	19	Christian Eckes	McAnally-Hilgemann Racing	Chevrolet	179	Running
2	14	35	Jake Garcia	McAnally-Hilgemann Racing	Chevrolet	179	Running
3	5	4	Chase Purdy	Kyle Busch Motorsports	Chevrolet	179	Running
4	10	1	Jesse Love	TRICON Garage	Toyota	179	Running
5	6	99	Ben Rhodes	ThorSport Racing	Ford	179	Running
6	17	23	Grant Enfinger	GMS Racing	Chevrolet	179	Running
7	15	5	Dean Thompson	TRICON Garage	Toyota	179	Running
8	27	02	Kaden Honeycutt	Young’s Motorsports	Chevrolet	179	Running
9	25	15	Tanner Gray	TRICON Garage	Toyota	179	Running
10	3	2	Nick Sanchez	Rev Racing	Chevrolet	179	Running
11	28	88	Matt Crafton	ThorSport Racing	Ford	179	Running
12	9	24	Rajah Caruth †	GMS Racing	Chevrolet	179	Running
13	31	45	Lawless Alan	Niece Motorsports	Chevrolet	179	Running
14	2	98	Ty Majeski	ThorSport Racing	Ford	179	Running
15	23	13	Hailie Deegan	ThorSport Racing	Ford	179	Running
16	32	22	Christian Rose	AM Racing	Ford	179	Running
17	34	04	Spencer Davis	Roper Racing	Ford	179	Running
18	1	11	Corey Heim	TRICON Garage	Toyota	179	Running
19	35	20	Nick Leitz	Young’s Motorsports	Chevrolet	179	Running
20	36	56	Tyler Hill	Hill Motorsports	Toyota	179	Running
21	26	9	Colby Howard	CR7 Motorsports	Chevrolet	179	Running
22	19	16	Tyler Ankrum	Hattori Racing Enterprises	Toyota	178	Running
23	12	17	Taylor Gray †	TRICON Garage	Toyota	177	Running
24	20	52	Stewart Friesen	Halmar Friesen Racing	Toyota	175	Running
25	4	38	Zane Smith	Front Row Motorsports	Ford	172	Accident
26	21	75	Sean Hingorani	Henderson Motorsports	Chevrolet	167	Accident
27	7	51	Jack Wood	Kyle Busch Motorsports	Chevrolet	162	Accident
28	16	77	Derek Kraus	Spire Motorsports	Chevrolet	156	Accident
29	13	42	Carson Hocevar	Niece Motorsports	Chevrolet	146	Accident
30	24	25	Stefan Parsons	Rackley WAR	Chevrolet	128	Accident
31	11	41	Bayley Currey	Niece Motorsports	Chevrolet	128	Accident
32	22	43	Daniel Dye #	GMS Racing	Chevrolet	128	Accident
33	18	61	Jake Drew	Hattori Racing Enterprises	Toyota	100	Accident
34	29	66	Conner Jones	ThorSport Racing	Ford	100	Accident
35	33	7	Marco Andretti	Spire Motorsports	Chevrolet	54	Accident
36	30	30	Chris Hacker	On Point Motorsports	Toyota	53	Accident
DNQ		12	Spencer Boyd	Young’s Motorsports	Chevrolet
DNQ		33	Keith McGee	Reaume Brothers Racing	Ford

Bold – Champion
Underline – Championship Round
Italics – Rookie of the Year
† – Competed for Rookie of the Year