It was never much of a secret that Riley Herbst landed his 23XI Racing ride for the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season because of the funding he brings from Monster Energy, through a deal with the Herbst family-owned Terrible's gas station chain.
He struggled in top-tier equipment throughout a lengthy run in the Xfinity Series. He was winless with Joe Gibbs Racing from 2018 to 2020, finishing 12th in points as a full-time driver in 2020, and didn't win a race with Stewart-Haas Racing until late 2023. He added two wins in 2024 but never finished higher than seventh in the championship in four years with the team.
There were certainly better options available to put in the third 23XI Racing Toyota, which had never been run full-time prior to 2025. But the Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan-owned team took the pay driver route, and what happened next was something anybody and everybody could have predicted.
Riley Herbst proved NASCAR fans right in 2025
To the surprise of very few, Herbst finished 35th in the championship standings, ahead of only Rick Ware Racing's Cody Ware among full-time drivers, while teammates Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick both made the playoffs just one year after Reddick's (and the team's) first ever Championship 4 appearance.
While Ware finished behind Herbst in points, he actually finished ahead of him in terms of best finish. Herbst finished no higher than 14th all year, which was the worst best finish among all drivers.
The highlight of Herbst's rookie season was probably managing to hang on to his car in what could have been a race-ending wreck on the final lap of the Daytona 500, which he finished 17th. It's certainly something that William Byron, who proceeded to go from ninth to first to win the race for the second year in a row, is grateful for, because a caution would have ended his repeat bid.
The main option fans would have wanted to see (and still want to see) in the No. 35 Toyota is Corey Heim, who is inexplicably still without any full-time NASCAR ride for 2026 after winning the Truck Series championship with a dominant 12-win season in 2025.
Heim, 23XI Racing's development driver, made four starts for 23XI Racing in 2025, and two of his four results were better than Herbst's best in all 36 of his starts. In fact, Heim beat all three of the team's full-time drivers with his 13th place finish at Kansas Speedway and his drive from the back to sixth in a race with high tire degradation at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Herbst being selected over Heim, who already had three quality seasons of Truck Series experience under his belt heading into 2025, was a frustration point for many fans, and the nine-month season did absolutely nothing to change that perception.
The fact that no changes have been made for 2026, however, is even more bizarre, because at some point, you've got to believe that a manufacturer change isn't out of the question for the 23-year-old Marietta, Georgia native if he continues to be kept out of Cup with Toyota.
Heim is also said to be blacklisted at Joe Gibbs Racing, explaining his lack of an Xfinity (O'Reilly Auto Parts) Series ride with the team, merely due to his fractured relationship with Ty Gibbs from their ARCA days together. Will Herbst's ride go to Heim in 2027?