Corey Heim, Doug Kalitta and Brent Crews engineered a victorious weekend for Toyota in NASCAR, NHRA and ARCA while Road America saw exciting GR Cup racing and multiple podium finishes for GR Supra drivers.
NASCAR
Corey Heim continued his impressive season with his second straight, and seventh Truck Series victory overall this season at Richmond Raceway on Friday night. Heim, who has led in every Truck Series race this season, finished the regular season with a record-setting 65 Playoff points, giving him the number one seed.
“It is awesome,” said Heim. “We’ve carved on this one for a while. We’ve been in position for a lot of these this year – I feel like we were the best truck at Martinsville and (North) Wilkesboro, but I felt like they got away from us. We kind of got this one back – I didn’t feel like we were the best truck tonight. The No. 98 (Ty Majeski) was obviously really stout, but he had a run in and got some damage, so being able to be there when it counted was the first goal, and we were – just was able to execute it from there. Huge thank you to TRICON Garage, Toyota, Safelite – everyone that makes it happen for me.”
- Corey Heim
In his debut for Halmar Friesen Racing, Kaden Honeycutt was impressive throughout – clinching his Playoff berth by the end of the first stage before finishing 10th. Honeycutt is the ninth seed in the Playoffs.
Despite several strong Camrys and two stage wins, Denny Hamlin led Team Toyota with a 10th-place finish in Saturday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Richmond Raceway, as several drivers encountered issues in the closing laps.
“Yeah, just kind of a missed race,” Hamlin said. “We were really bad on pit lane, I sped. Team had a lot of bad stops, and this track – you can’t give up track position, and we did. I thought we were fortunate to get back to the top-10 there. The only reason we did is we had a fast Progressive Camry.”
- Denny Hamlin
NHRA
Doug Kalitta captured his second consecutive Top Fuel victory of the NHRA season with a win Sunday at Brainerd International Raceway. The win moved Kalitta within 51 points of teammate Shawn Langdon heading into the regular season finale in two weeks. Billy Torrence, making his 2025 debut, reached the semifinals before falling to Kalitta.
“For me, I just need to do my job,” Kalitta said. “I’ve kind of let the Mac Tools Toyota guys down on occasion. Really proud of this effort that we’ve got going on, especially with the timing and with Alan (Johnson, crew chief), Mac (Savage, crew chief) and our whole team. They’re putting it together well and it’s going down the track. Just real thankful. It’s great to win here (Brainerd) and going to Indy (U.S. Nationals) next. Hopefully we can keep it rolling!”
- Doug Kalitta
In Funny Car, J.R. Todd made his second final round of the season but fell to race winner Austin Prock. Ron Capps made the second round on Sunday.
ARCA
Brent Crews earned a dominating win in Sunday’s ARCA Menards Series race at the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield, Illinois. The victory marks the third this season, and fifth overall, for the Toyota Development Driver in national ARCA series competition.
GR CUP
In a hectic, wet-track Race 1, Spike Kohlbecker claimed his first win of the season at Wisconsin’s Road America. Series points leader and Toyota Development Driver Westin Workman drove from the 10th starting position to finish third to earn his eighth podium of the season.
In Race 2 on Sunday, Will Robusto took over the race lead on lap 8 after starting fifth, and fought off stiff competition to capture his second race win of the season.
GT4
Two Toyota GR Supra GT4 EVO2s claimed podiums in Race 2 on Sunday at Road America. Marco Polo Motorsports’ Nicolai Elghanayan and Mads Siljehaug finished third in the silver class, while Kenny Schmied and Anthony Geraci also finished third in the Am class for the RAFA Racing Team.
Race 1 on Saturday was postponed due to inclement weather and will be made up during the Barber Motorsports Park weekend in September.
WHAT’S NEXT
The NASCAR Cup Series closes its regular season at Daytona International Speedway this weekend. First, the NASCAR Xfinity Series competes at the ‘World Center of Racing’ on Friday, August 22 at 7:30 p.m. ET on CW, before the Cup Series runs on Saturday, August 23 at 7:30 p.m. ET on NBC.
The ARCA Menards Series runs on Friday, August 22 at Madison International Speedway. FS1 has the TV coverage at 9:00 p.m. ET.