Given Corey Heim's status as arguably the top prospect in the Toyota Racing Development pipeline for pretty much this entire decade, it made sense that his name was often mentioned whenever a seat opened up at Joe Gibbs Racing, specifically in the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series.
But as year after year went by without Heim ever getting the nod from Toyota's flagship team, the obvious assumption became that he is blacklisted by the organization due to his feuds with Ty Gibbs during the 2021 ARCA Menards Series season.
Instead of getting the nod to join Joe Gibbs Racing's O'Reilly Series team and then potentially move up to the Cup Series, he "overstayed his welcome" in the Craftsman Truck Series, where he ran much of the 2022 season for Kyle Busch Motorsports before spending the next three whole seasons competing for Tricon Garage.
Unsurprisingly, he capped off that stretch with a 12-win championship-winning season, which concluded with him recording eight wins in an 11-race span. His three wins in five races as a part-time driver this year mean he's shot up to just two wins away from being in the top three on the series' all-time wins list.
And while he probably should have been a full-time Cup Series driver at least a few years ago, the waiting period might have been the best thing to happen to him, even though he was left without a full-time ride in any series for 2026.
Joe Gibbs Racing dropped the ball with Corey Heim
Heim signed with 23XI Racing as a development driver ahead of the 2025 season, and he has made select starts in their fourth Cup Series entry ever since. In only his 10th start in that car and 13th career start at the Cup level, he found victory lane on Sunday on Naval Base Coronado.
He's tied with Gibbs on the all-time wins list, and with 127 fewer starts.
It's not the first time he has made waves, either. In only his fourth start with 23XI Racing, during a race with high tire degradation at Bristol Motor Speedway back in September, he drove from last to what was then a career-best sixth.
His first win notably came just weeks after it was finally confirmed that he is indeed set to compete full-time for 23XI Racing in 2027, replacing Riley Herbst behind the wheel of the No. 35 Toyota alongside Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace.
While 23XI Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing do have a technical alliance, they are not the same team. Yet the Toyota powerhouse had more than their fair share of chances to sign the 23-year-old Marietta, Georgia native over the years, and time and time again, instead of making the obvious decision to find a way to put him in a car, they turned the other way.
Could it be that he's blacklisted? That could certainly have played a role. Could it be that he doesn't bring funding? That too is unfortunately all too common when it comes to top drivers being passed up for mediocrity.
But when Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan had the chance to lock him up as their "driver of the future", they took advantage. And while not many were pleased with the decision to have the well-funded Herbst running full-time at the Cup level instead of Heim for two years, the two co-owners deserve a ton of credit for not caving to the pressure to rush Heim to the top.
It has already been paying off, and perhaps more so than an indication of what Hamlin and Jordan got right, it's an appropriately timed warning shot to Joe Gibbs Racing reminding them of exactly what they missed out on.
Heim won't compete in the Cup Series race at the Sonoma Raceway road course this weekend, but he is set to return next weekend at Chicagoland Speedway, which hasn't hosted a Cup race since 2019. The eero 400 is set to be shown live on TNT Sports from the Joliet, Illinois oval starting at 6:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, July 5.
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