Corey Heim earned the regular season championship in his first full-time season in the NASCAR Truck Series and enters Friday night’s TSport 200 (9 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN) at Indianapolis Raceway Park as the No. 1 seed.

“Yeah, it really means a lot,” Heim said. “With TRICON Garage and Toyota Racing, we’ve come such a long way from the beginning of the year. I really felt like we had a lot of progress to make in the first four or five weeks and we’ve really been improving ever since.”

The Toyota development driver is the first driver in NASCAR history to earn a regular season title despite missing a race (Gateway, illness) and earning a Playoff waiver. However, when looking at his finishes this season, that shouldn’t be all that surprising though either.

Heim, the reigning Truck Series Rookie of the Year, leads the series in top-10 finishes and average finish. He’s finished in the top eight in all but two starts this season. In fact, he’s not finished worse than eighth since Bristol Dirt including finishes of 2nd, 4th, 1st, 2nd and 6th respectively over his last five tries.

“I would certainly say so,” Heim said if he should be a favorite to reach Phoenix this Fall. “We’ve been about the most consistent these last two or three months. If we can carry that into the Playoffs, we will be tough to beat. We’ve got a couple more short tracks coming up and I think we will be good.”

While Heim is a rookie in the playoffs, his crew chief, Scott Zipadelli is not. That vast array of experience on his pit box is what Heim feels can help guide him to a potential championship this Fall.

“For sure, (crew chief) Scott Zipadelli,” Heim said on who he’s going to be leaning on. “He has Playoff experience with a lot of different drivers and he’s won a championship. Just learning what that is like – it’s really my first time competing in a Playoff format, so leaning on him and leaning on my crew who is also full of experience, along with a lot of people in the shop. Once again, just hats off to everyone at TRICON Garage, Toyota Racing, JBL and Safelite.”

The top seed in the playoffs was represented in the Championship 4 in 6 of the 7 years under this format including all consecutively. The No. 1 seed also has won 3 championships in this era but just two in the last 5 years though. One was last year.

“It means a lot having that buffer going into the Playoffs,” said Heim in reference to winning the Regular Season Championship and the 15 bonus Playoff points that go with it. “Not having that close encounter with the Playoffs’ cutline  right from the start, I feel like it lets you start the Playoffs off with a little bit less stress.”  

Heim’s fast momentum shouldn’t stall this weekend if his series track debut last season at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park is any indication, the Georgia native started fourth and finished fifth.  

“Our consistency over the past two or three months has been really good, and just being able to collect a lot of stage points and get some top fives and wins along the way,” said Heim. “If we can continue that momentum into the Playoffs we should be in really good shape.”