KBM hoists Atlanta trophy, but teamwork tranquility runs in short supply

HAMPTON, Ga. — The benefits of teamwork might often make the dream work, so the saying goes, but it sometimes produces nightmares when thing go awry. Kyle Busch Motorsports’ latest dream sequence had moments of a restless, fitful sleep after a victorious but contentious Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Corey Heim, a 19-year-old Georgia native, notched his first NASCAR Camping World Truck Series victory in Saturday’s Fr8 208, but it came at the expense of Kyle Busch Motorsports teammate Chandler Smith, who went from first at the white flag to a fourth-place finish at the checkers. Smith had led the previous 20 laps before Heim took command for the final circuit.

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Further muddling the team dynamic, Heim’s decisive push past Smith came from another KBM campaigner — John Hunter Nemechek, who was two laps down but racing in the lead pack after early trouble. So while the other two KBM mates gave Heim’s No. 51 Toyota congratulatory nudges on the cool-down lap, Smith suggested the team harmony was in need of some counseling, saying, “We need to talk.”

“I mean, we go with the mindset where it was speedway racing today, was it not?” said Smith, who won two weeks ago in the Truck Series’ stop at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “So, went in with the mindset of, we’ve gotta stick with teammates, teammates are gonna win this race, yada yada yada. I was the only KBM teammate today. Corey helped me one time, but any other time, we never helped each other. If anything, we screwed each other. I’m the only one that really helped, and I’m not saying that to toot my own horn, I’m just being real.”

Smith said the organization had a pre-race huddle to talk strategy, predicting that Atlanta’s reconfigured layout would race more like a superspeedway. That meant a focus on using the aerodynamic draft as a helper, allowing KBM’s three-truck effort to move forward together.

Smith said those plans were largely abandoned after the green flag waved, and his spicy radio chatter said as much after a two-truck tandem with Heim broke apart after a mid-race restart.