By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service

AVONDALE, Ariz. – Ty Majeski climbed out of his race runner-up No. 98 ThorSport Racing Ford F-150 on Phoenix Raceway pit road Friday night with the smoke from Corey Heim’s championship burnout nearby still lingering overhead.

Ty Majeski, driver of the #98 Soda Sense/Curb Records Ford, drives during qualifying for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship at Phoenix Raceway on October 31, 2025 in Avondale, Arizona. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

Less than a second separated the popular 31-year-old 2024 series champion Majeski from the race winner Heim in his bid to become only the second driver in NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series history to claim back-to-back season titles  – matching his ThorSport teammate Matt Crafton.

And it certainly was a valiant try. As happens in big-time auto racing, a couple breaks this way or that and Majeski might have hoisted the trophy. He certainly forced Heim to earn it and walks away from Phoenix with his head held high.

Majeski, who ran on Heim’s bumper for much of the 161-lap race, bolted out front to the race lead on the first of two overtime restarts in Friday’s Truck Series Championship Race, his two-tire stop to Heim’s four-tire change looked initially to be the winning move.

Ty Majeski, driver of the #98 Soda Sense/Curb Records Ford, looks on during qualifying for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship at Phoenix Raceway on October 31, 2025 in Avondale, Arizona. (Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images)

On the ensuing restart, however, Heim’s four fresh tires helped him move forward immediately and he pulled off an amazing seven-wide overtake into Turn 1 that put him directly on Majeski’s bumper. But a second yellow flag flew.

This time the front row pitted the two trucks side-by-side and Heim was able to get the edge and pull away to his first NASCAR championship by .993-seconds.

It marked the third time in four years Majeski raced for the series title and on this night, Majeski and his team gave it their all, but the season’s most dominant driver, the 23-year-old Heim – a 12-race winner – was just too good.

Ty Majeski, driver of the #98 Soda Sense/Curb Records Ford, and Kaden Honeycutt, driver of the #52 Halmar International Toyota, race during the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship at Phoenix Raceway on October 31, 2025 in Avondale, Arizona. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

“Really proud of the whole season this group put together,” Majeski said. “We had a pretty rough stretch in the April, May, June months. We had a pretty strong meeting with ourselves, looked in the mirror and said, ‘Hey, we’re champions, we can turn this thing around.’

“We did. We put on a streak of 12 races in a row in the top 10, nine of them top fives. I thought we were poised to do something very special tonight.

“Honestly just a little bit short. Very close.”

As with his driver, Majeski’s car chief Brad Means said the team could only be proud of the effort despite the near-miss.

“Obviously, we had high hopes coming back here from last year’s success we had here as the dominant truck,” Means said. “We thought maybe yesterday in practice we were going to have the same trend. But we didn’t qualify as well as we wanted to, I think the daytime temperatures kind of threw us for a loop earlier and we just never quite hit on it like we did last year when we dominated the race.

2025 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Championship 4 driver, Ty Majeski speaks to the media during NASCAR Championship Media Day at Phoenix Raceway on October 30, 2025 in Avondale, Arizona. (Photo by Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)

“But honestly the 11 [Heim] has been the class of the field all year. We’ve struggled this year and as a team had the worst luck. We had really good trucks a lot of the time but never really capitalized on it with the finishes we needed.

“We had great pit stops tonight, our guys were phenomenal job and have been all year, but we just didn’t get it done. I thought the two tires was going to be the call to win the race  had a caution not come out. We were like literally 200 yards away from winning the race.”

Although disappointed to come so close to a second championship, Majeski closed out the season proud of the effort – 18 top-10 finishes and nine top-fives in 25 races including three runner-up finishes.

“Proud of [crew chief] Joe [Shear] for making that gutsy call,” Majeski said. “Hard to make that in that moment. You always want to be on offense at the end of these races. I think two tires gave us the best opportunity to win tonight.”

“I think it was the right call, gave ourselves a shot at a championship. If that restart goes a little bit differently, I get a little bit of a gap, we’re probably sitting here as two-time champion.