Corey Heim is currently the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series points leader, even despite missing the last race at Gateway due to an illness. In the middle of all of that, Heim has won a Truck Series Rookie of the Year award, and he has been surrounded by racing for virtually his entire life.
According to his website, Heim is from Marietta, Georgia, and he began racing at five years old in quarter midgets. He was born on July 5, 2002.
During his early career, Heim ran legends cars at Atlanta Motor Speedway, winning track championships in the 2016 Young Lions Division and 2017 Thursday Thunder Pro Division. From there, Heim turned his attention to late models.
He ran full-time in the CARS Pro Late Model Tour in 2018, finishing second in the points and earning one win in the series at South Boston Speedway. Heim has also participated in other famous late model races such as the Slinger Nationals, Martinsville 300, Winchester 400, and the Snowball Derby. Heim finished as high as second in the Winchester 400 in 2019 and second in the Martinsville 300 in 2018, albeit in controversial fashion.
According to Race22, in the 2018 Martinsville 300, Heim took the lead in the closing laps over C.E. Falk. However, a caution came out where officials reverted to the previous lap scoring for the overtime restart. Falk beat Heim on the restart to take the win.
Regardless of that disappointment, bigger opportunities were on the horizon for Heim. First in the ARCA Menards Series.
In 2019, at the age of 16, Heim ran in 13 ARCA Menards Series races on short tracks for Chad Bryant with Paul Andrews as the crew chief. Andrews is famous in NASCAR circles for winning the 1992 Cup Series Championship with Alan Kulwicki.
In 2019, Heim was solid, but not spectacular. He finished all of the races, and finished in the top-five in eight of his 13 tries. However, he never won, nor was he really even close to winning.
In 2020, Heim went a different route, running full-time in the CARS Late Model Stock Tour. However, he also got an incredible part-time opportunity in the ARCA Menards Series with Billy Venturini and Andy Hillenburg. Heim ran seven ARCA races in 2020 with three in the ARCA Menards Series, three more in the ARCA Menards Series East, and one in the ARCA Menards Series West.
Heim had solid success winning a CARS Tour race at Hickory and finishing in the top-ten in each of his ARCA starts. Most notably, Heim won his first ARCA Menards Series race in the season finale at Kansas Speedway. The reward? A full-time opportunity for Billy Venturini in the ARCA Menards Series as Heim turned 18.
In 2021, Heim was nothing short of spectacular in ARCA winning six races with 15 top three finishes and never finishing worse than seventh. He would finish second in points to Ty Gibbs. Heim even made his Craftsman Truck Series debut racing for Kyle Busch Motorsports for three races.
Heim led two laps in his debut at Darlington before being caught up in an accident in the closing laps. Despite the rough finish and two more finishes outside of the top-ten, Heim was set for a bigger NASCAR National Touring Series opportunity.
In 2022, Heim dropped back to part-time in the ARCA Menards Series for Venturini, and Heim ran 16 races in the Craftsman Truck Series for Kyle Busch Motorsports. The results were up-and-down, but he continued to flash potential.
Heim won two races at Atlanta and Gateway and two poles as well at Gateway and Mid-Ohio. However, he also had six finishes outside of the top-20 including four DNFs. In ARCA, Heim continued to have success winning four poles and two more races including his second consecutive race at Daytona.
In October of 2022, Heim was announced that he would move to full-time Truck Series competition for the rebranded TRICON Garage, formerly David Gilliland Racing.
Heim has impressed so far this season. With only one DNF at Atlanta, Heim also got his third career Truck Series win at Martinsville, and he also took over the points lead following North Wilkesboro. He has nine top-10s so far in 11 starts.
Aside from that, Heim also made his Xfinity Series debut for Sam Hunt Racing. In his second start at Darlington, he took his first career top-ten. From here, it seems the sky could be the limit for Heim in his career.
Another race weekend in the books. While Ryan Blaney battled back from several pit road setbacks to win his second straight race at Phoenix, other drivers were much to be desired. It was a big win for Penske but for several others, they leave the first “real” race of the season scratching their head with a lot that they need to figure out. Here are the biggest losers of NASCAR’s Spring 2026 Phoenix race weekend.
I’m afraid that this is starting to be habitual. Another race weekend at RCR for Kyle Busch, another terrible result. Well, the finish wasn’t exactly awful. While 17th is hardly up to Kyle’s standards, it’s about as good as it gets anymore for the two-time champion who hasn’t won a race in nearly a hundred starts.
To start things off, there was a reason to be cautiously optimistic about the future of that RCR No. 8 Chevy. New crew chief. Personnel changes. A new Chevy body. He even scored the pole for the 68th running of the Daytona 500 last month. But, since then, it has been a sharp slope downward. He was mostly a non-factor in the first three races. And, today, it seemed like the No. 8 Chevy was out to lunch. They unloaded slow. They qualified in the back of the pack. And, before Stage 1 even ended, Kyle was running 34th with no apparent issues and went a lap down to leader Ryan Blaney. To add insult to injury, Kyle Bush had a tire go down on him three times today. More than any other driver. It appears to be back to the drawing board for team No. 8.
You could say that the Hendrick No. 48 team had a rough weekend in general. But I think it would be more accurate to say that the entire start to 2026 has been catastrophic. Heading into today’s race, even with Bowman starting the first three races of the season, the No. 48 team was 36th in points, last among all full-time drivers. Even Cody Ware was ahead of him. If that’s not bad, I don’t know what is.
To rub salt in the wound, their driver missed today at Phoenix due to showing symptoms of vertigo. So, Anthony Alfredo was into sub and…it went about as well as you’d expect. He went a lap down early and never recovered. He got caught up in the incident involving Joey Logano and DNF’d. Officially, they scored a 33rd finishing position. This is the worst start Bowman could ever imagine, considering that he’s in a contract year.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’ve lost my marbles. “Come on, dude! Penske just swept the weekend! How can they be losers?” Hear me out. Let’s start first with the two other Penske drivers, shall we? Joey Logano caused not one, but two multi-car pileups, one involving his Penske teammate, Austin Cindric. Cars were utterly destroyed. Before that, both Cindric and Logano were running solidly in the top 10.
So, it’s not for a lack of speed that they make our Biggest Losers list. The reason they’re listed here is that a lot of their problems today, if not all of them, were self-inflicted. Logano was driving sloppily and that took out Cindric. And even race winner Ryan Blaney almost lost this race on pit road numerous times. Rookie mistakes by the pit crew constantly had him charging from behind. Pit road penalties. He was like a yo-yo going back and forth throughout the field. What saved him in the end was that, on that last restart, Blaney took two tires and Christopher Bell took 4. If that had not happened, it is extremely possible that Blaney ultimately would have lost the race and it would have been because of their numerous mistakes in the pits.
They got lucky this week. They probably won’t get that lucky again. They need to clean up those nagging, senseless mistakes.
Ole, Danny boy. If Alex Bowman’s seat is the hottest in the series, Daniel Suarez has to be the second hottest in the garage. That No. 7 car has been a revolving door of drivers for the last several years and it looks like Suarez is shaping up to be Spire’s latest victim. It’s the same old story with the team: they show impressive speed in qualifying and even early on in the race. But rarely do they ever put a full race together. That criticism isn’t just for Suarez, it applies to the team across the board.
But Carson Hocevar is the team’s golden child. He’s not going anywhere. And the team seems pretty high on Michael McDowell at the moment. That leaves Suarez looking like the odd man out, a seat-warmer, if you will. He needs to perform. And, he’s done well to start, admittedly. But he qualified 5th for today’s race. He even earned a few stage points in the opening stage. Then, he faltered and left the race with an unceremonious whimper. Ultimately, after he was no longer a factor, he was caught up in a mid-race wreck. He finished 30th. That’s a tough pill to swallow for the Mexican-born driver. If he wants to keep his ride next year, he needs to show stark improvement in the coming weeks. I have a strong feeling that that ride is about to be a highly sought-after commodity once silly season rolls around.
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The first checkered flag of the 2026 rendition of the NASCAR West Coast Swing (as abbreviated as it is) has officially flown. It was an exciting race, full of close, tight-cornered racing, a plethora of tire issues littered throughout, and a couple of heartbreaking, hard hits. Surviving it all was Ryan Blaney, who captured the flag in the Straight Talk 500 at Phoenix Raceway. He survived pit road mishaps and passed a total of 49 cars to win the race today. It marks his 18th career victory, sweeping the weekend for Team Penske. So, for Blaney and Team Penske, the race was the highest of highs. Not everyone escaped unscathed, though. Here are the key takeaways from NASCAR’s spring date at Phoenix.
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Following a relatively clean first stage, Stage number 2 and beyond was littered with cautions. Most of these cautions were a result of tires going down after only about 20 laps or so of use. But the caution on Lao 216 was purely driver error. Joey Logano, who was running 7th at the time, made a move down on the apron approaching the finish line. Chaos ensued. Here’s what happened.
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