For the third time in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season, 23XI Racing are set to field a fourth car this weekend at the Chicago Street Course.
Corey Heim, 23XI Racing's development driver who competes full-time for Toyota's Tricon Garage in the Truck Series, made his first start of the year at Kansas Speedway in May, and he managed to beat all three of 23XI Racing's full-time drivers (Tyler Reddick, Bubba Wallace, and Riley Herbst). He crashed out of his next start at Nashville Superspeedway last month.
The No. 67 Toyota is back on the entry list for this Sunday afternoon's Grant Park 165 at the 12-turn, 2.2-mile (3.541-kilometer) temporary street circuit in Chicago, Illinois, and that is bad news for several other teams.
23XI Racing decision makes life harder on other NASCAR teams
There are 41 cars on the entry list this weekend and just 40 spots open, meaning there are five non-chartered (open) cars going for four spots since the 36 chartered cars are all locked in.
And yes, 23XI Racing's other three cars (as well as Front Row Motorsports' three cars) are still considered chartered cars, even amid their ongoing antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR.
The other four drivers of open cars are Kaulig Racing's Will Brown, Richard Childress Racing's Austin Hill, Garage 66's Josh Bilicki, and Live Fast Motorsports' Katherine Legge.
One of them will not make it into the race, and you'd have to imagine it won't be Heim.
It probably won't be Brown or Hill either, given the relative strength of Kaulig Racing and Richard Childress Racing when compared to Garage 66 and Live Fast Motorsports.
All things considered, 23XI Racing's decision to add a fourth car for Heim this weekend will likely be what keeps either Bilicki or Legge from competing.
You have to go back to November 2018 to find the last time a non-Daytona 500 race had more cars on the entry list than spots in the race. That weekend at Texas Motor Speedway, Timmy Hill and MBM Motorsports (the team now known as Garage 66) failed to make it into the show.
UPDATE: Corey Heim has dramatically failed to qualify after an incident in qualifying. Katherine Legge took the final spot.
The Grant Park 165 is set to be shown live on TNT Sports from the Chicago Street Course starting at 2:00 p.m. ET this Sunday, July 6.