2025 was a special year for Corey Heim, who, after winning 12 races, captured the Truck Series championship. As a reward, he earned a chance to shine at arguably the highest level, and so far, he has done a solid job.
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Heim will start the 2026 Daytona 500, suiting up for 23XI Racing. He locked himself into the race on his very first qualifying attempt by posting one of the fastest time-trial laps among the eight Open entries, alongside Justin Allgaier.
Heim’s final starting position will be determined through the Daytona Duels scheduled for Thursday night. Regardless, the achievement is a remarkable one, especially considering there were doubts about whether he would qualify at all.
The success did not come easily. Heim said about what he endured in Round 2 of the qualifying, “I had to tell myself like 10 times before qualifying to remind myself of the RPMs and when to shift and stuff. With the trucks, we have our RPM number. I’ve almost got to integrate it into my brain at this point.
“I don’t have to look at the dash. Like, I hear the RPM on my shift, you know? It’s so wired to me,” he added.
All that changed when he was in the Next Gen car, and he had to figure things out on the spot. The 10 fastest cars in Round 1 of the qualifying session move on to Round 2. Heim had put together a lap that made him the fifth fastest car on the field.
Allgaier was 14th-quickest, and Corey LaJoie was just 0.004 seconds slower than him. This put all three of them inside the fastest top-10 cars in the first round of qualifying.
What this meant was that the three would have had to race it out against each other to determine who locked into the Daytona 500. But LaJoie and Allgaier were both dumped out of the top-10, and Heim got his entry confirmed. He admitted that the possibility of them racing it out had taken him aback. He had never seen three Open entry cars make it to the final round.
Fortunately, things ended up working in his favor. Heim has a 12-race Cup Series schedule planned with 23XI Racing this year. This is undoubtedly the first step towards him becoming a full-time driver for the organization in the future. Hopefully, the rest of his week will go by as impressively.
