Corey Heim’s Rise To NASCAR’s Top Level Feels As Inevitable As Sunrise

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA – JANUARY 23: Corey Heim poses for a photo during NASCAR Production Days at Charlotte Convention Center on January 23, 2025 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)

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If you are annoyed by the term “Heim Time,” you may want to stop reading now. For everyone else, guess what: it is indeed Heim Time.

In one of the least surprising announcements since meteorologists predicted Florida would be hot in July, 23XI Racing announced Saturday that Corey Heim will move to the NASCAR Cup Series full-time in 2027. Heim will drive for the organization co-owned by Denny Hamlin and NBA legend Michael Jordan.

Of course, this has seemed like the plan all along.

Heim signed on as a development driver for the team in February 2025, a move that already looked smart at the time and appears even smarter now. The 24-year-old Georgia native has been part of Toyota’s driver pipeline since 2020 and has spent much of his NASCAR career building a résumé in the Truck Series that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

He earned his first Truck Series victory in just his fifth start while driving for Kyle Busch Motorsports in 2022 and has added 24 more since. His 25 career wins rank fourth on the series’ all-time list.

The relationship between Heim and 23XI Racing has been steadily growing ever since.

The team made him a reserve driver in 2024, entering him in 13 NASCAR Xfinity Series races—now the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series—along with the Cup Series race at Nashville Superspeedway. That Nashville start was his third Cup appearance, following two starts with Legacy Motor Club.

His role expanded in 2025 to include development-driver duties and a four-race Cup schedule, highlighted by a sixth-place finish in the fall race at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Appropriately enough, Nashville became the place where Heim joined Hamlin on Saturday to make everything official.

“It means the world to me,” Heim said.

“This is super exciting. This is something I’ve been sitting on for awhile and just means the world to me. I’ve always wanted to be a Cup driver ever since I was a little kid and to get that news out and start preparing with my 23XI Racing folks here it’s just super awesome.”

Heim won nine Truck Series races across the 2023 and 2024 seasons. But it was 2025 that turned admiration into expectation.

He seemed nearly untouchable, collecting 12 victories and punctuating the season with a dramatic championship-clinching win at Phoenix Raceway. For much of the year, it appeared as though the only thing capable of slowing Heim down was the calendar.

Curiously, his championship season did not immediately translate into a full-time ride for 2026.

He entered this season without a full-time schedule, a reality that left many in the garage scratching their heads. Meanwhile, 23XI Racing expanded his Cup opportunities, giving him a 12-race schedule in 2026, four of which he has already completed.

The team characterized the arrangement as a deliberate effort to allow Heim to focus on development before taking on the demands of a full Cup campaign.

Despite Saturday’s announcement, there are currently no plans to add races to Heim’s schedule this season.

“We’ve already planned that out and it’s hard to add some things,” Hamlin said. “We obviously have tried to get him as many start in different vehicles, whether it is trucks or whatever we can. But the Cup schedule with the turnaround time makes it very difficult to just add another race. That part would be challenging. Doesn’t mean we aren’t going to try, but it will be challenging.”

As for the timing, it feels almost preordained.

Heim will take over the No. 35 Toyota full-time next season. That seat is currently occupied by Riley Herbst, whose contract with 23XI Racing expires at the end of this year.

While Herbst has shown flashes of potential, he has yet to establish himself as a consistent contender at the Cup level. Heim, meanwhile, arrives with the kind of momentum that organizations spend years searching for.

So if the phrase “Heim Time” already makes you roll your eyes, it may be worth getting used to it. There is a very good chance NASCAR fans will be hearing it quite a bit over the next decade.