Finally, it breaks right in the Truck Series at Michigan for Friesen

Stewart Friesen really needed this one.

It had been 72 races since the Truck Series veteran had won at Texas Motor Speedway in 2022 and things had largely gone downhill ever since. There had been crew chief changes and performance slumps that all precipitated a Murphy’s Law first half of the 2025 season.

Crew chief Jimmy Villeneuve had built fast trucks and Friesen had driven strong races but things kept happening. He arguably should have won at Atlanta but Tyler Ankrum refused to push Friesen past Kyle Busch for championship reasons.

There was a degree of misfortune and bad luck, Friesen even declaring after getting crashed out of Rockingham that the way things had been going was encouraging him to leave the discipline altogether and just focus on his exceptional dirt career.

For all the bad luck the Halmar Friesen No. 52 experienced in the first half, they were awarded equal spades of fortune on Saturday at Michigan International Speedway with the most unlikely of wins.

First, the race devolved into a series of overtimes and then on the penultimate overtime, three drivers all chose to take the preferred bottom lane and gave Friesen the chance to race for his playoff life.

He entered the race 49 points out of a provisional playoff spot and likely needed nothing short of a win to advance.

Everything broke his way for once.

Even on the final restart, Grant Enfinger appeared to have a faster truck but was just barely dragged back by Luke Fenhaus entering Turn 3, the sniff of a side draft allowing Friesen to drive away and break the longest drought of his career.

“It just weighs on you, you know,” Friesen said. “It’s weighed on me. Racing is all I do and it’s all I love and it’s what we do. So when you struggle and things happen time and again, it’s hard to get back on the horse a lot of days.

“We have 14 great guys in our shop that give their heart and soul to this race team and we keep bringing them back wrecked trucks and finished they don’d deserve. It wears on me a lot and it was tough after having so many great trucks to start the season and not getting them the finishes the deserve.”

So yeah, Friesen and Villeneuve really needed this one, because they were legitimately wondering if this was worth continuing to do 20-plus weeks a year.

“Jimmy has put in so much work,” Friesen said. “I am just so proud of him and thankful he is getting some reward out of this. He’s been beat down. I have been beat down. We look over at eadh other sometimes and it’s like ‘can we even do this anymore’ a lot of times.”

And now they go from wondering whether or not to keep doing this to having a chance to race for the championship this autumn. It’s the beauty of this championship format and one that rewards a Friesen family motto.

“My grandfather always said the points are a suckers’ game and you go for wins and the money.”

Read more: Why Corey Lajoie changed his mind on NASCAR Trucks

Won and lost

For Friesen to have won, that means the race was lost elsewhere and there were no shortage of drivers that felt like potential wins got away over the course of numerous overtime finishes.

Corey Heim won both stages but crashed out on a restart with six laps to go alongside then leader Ross Chastain and teammate Giovanni Guggiero pushing him.

"The pace slowed way down," Heim told FOX Sports after the race. "We were going slower than we were behind the pace car. And then I rolled to his bumper, and nothing, we didn't go. I'm not going to fault him for the lack of experience there. He's still learning. I don't know. Maybe the spotters needed to call it better. We'll review it.

"My message is very clear on what my plan was over what was an optimal restart and how we could race it from there but evidentially it wasn't carried over to him very well so very disappointing."

Ruggiero for his part had no idea why that played out the way it did.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Ruggiero said. “Have to watch the replay. Haven’t seen it yet, looked at it, (nor) talked about it as a team yet. Yeah, it’s unfortunate. We had a really good truck and not sure what happened there. Just felt like I wasn’t ready to go yet. I was right at the start of the restart zone. Just have to look at the replay to see what happened there.”

Heim had only lost the lead in the first place because his crew elected to take four tires after the second stage break and seemed poised to win the race on pace and fuel mileage if not for the rash of cautions.

Grant Enfinger credited crew chief Jeff Stankiewicz for even having a shot, not that he knows what he would have done differently after inheriting the lead for overtime.

“I don’t know,’’ he said. “We weren’t as good as we thought we were in practice, but man, Jeff kept swinging stuff at it and got gutsy with both calls, the call to stay out and the call to come in. …Feel like all in all, we executed to the best of our ability, but it just wasn’t meant to be.’’

Corey Lajoie led the lap after the big crash involving Ruggiero, Heim and Chastain but was overtaken by Enfinger and also was left wondering what could have been.

Daniel Hemric was chasing Lajoie down with a tire that was losing pressure from a fender rub and it gave way to create another overtime as well.

Trouble for Daniel Hemric! Another overtime restart is coming up on FOX. 👀 pic.twitter.com/xWd2SvdtgR

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