TRUCKS: Corey Heim Hunting Truck Title in Record-Breaking Season

Rusty Jones, Liumen Digital Agency

Corey Heim has been one of the brightest prospects in NASCAR for quite some time…

Competing in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, the Marietta, Georgia-native has been kicking butts and taking names since he joined the rebranded TRICON Garage in 2023, but despite being a dominant force in the series, there is one critical aspect that continues to elude him – a championship.

Heim is doing all the right things, and it’s attracted the attention of NASCAR Cup Series team 23XI Racing (owned by Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan), who made the 23-year-old driver their first-ever development driver, which has provided opportunities in both the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series.

Even though many within the industry held the opinion that Heim should be advancing through the ranks of NASCAR’s National Series, a third full-time campaign in the Truck Series has given the driver of the No. 11 Toyota Tundra TRD Pro a legendary, record-breaking season.

In the first 18 races of the season, Heim has parked his No. 11 Toyota Tundra in Victory Lane a total of seven times, including the series’ last two events at Watkins Glen International and Richmond Raceway. With still seven races left in the season, Heim has led 1,125 circuits, and could break two long-standing records for the most wins in a single-season and most laps led in a single season.

All three seasons, Heim has been a favorite for the championship, but things just haven’t materialized. In 2023, Heim got into a tussle with Carson Hocevar late in the season-finale at Phoenix Raceway, which cost him the championship. The following season, Heim couldn’t match the pace of Majeski, finishing runner-up in the point standings.

So, with how things have been going this season, is the third time the charm? Maybe, but Heim doesn’t feel like there’s a lot that is different between this year’s NASCAR Truck Series Playoffs and the two seasons before it.

“Really not a ton for me,” Heim said when asked how different this year’s post-season is compared to the last two. “I think the main thing for us is that we’ve really connected a lot of the dots on maybe the prior struggles we’ve had so far and got a lot of things to improve in the Playoffs still regardless as far as keeping that going or keeping the momentum going.”

Now an 18-time race-winner in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, Heim is just about the perfect argument against the current post-season format that could exist. The 23XI Racing development driver is the series’ youngest 18-time winner, and the only winner for TRICON Garage under their current branding (collecting 16 wins in the last three years).

His performance as the driver of the TRICON No. 11 has also further cemented the legacy of crew chief Scott Zipadelli, who, following Richmond, jumped to second all-time in crew chief wins in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. In terms of driver-crew chief combination wins, Heim and Zipadelli rank fifth.

With Corey Heim's victory Friday at Richmond, Scott Zipadelli earned his 31st NASCAR Truck Series win as a crew chief -- ranking him second all-time behind Eric Phillips (44).#NASCAR | 📸: Nigel Kinrade for Toyota Racing pic.twitter.com/1P8zN3Aouq

— Joseph Srigley (@joe_srigley) August 19, 2025

“For me, there was some struggle areas last year that kind of lingered throughout the year and we never quite got past that. But, we were able to hone in on that in the offseason and sort of clear those up as far as maybe some packages that we brought to specific races tracks that didn’t work, and maybe some pit road.”

As the starts continue to click off and the Georgia-native continues to pick up additional laps on the racetrack, whether that be in the Truck, Xfinity, or Cup Series, Heim continues to get better to the point where some would consider him ready to compete full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Heim himself will tell you that there’s improvement, too. Especially when you take the freshly 18-year-old driver that showed up in the ARCA Menards Series in 2021.

“For the most part I think I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable in understanding what I need out of my truck on a regular basis,” Heim said. “I feel like in 2023 – I had the 16-race part-time schedule in 2022 with [Kyle Busch Motorsports] and then leading up with TRICON in 2023, I think a lot of us were unsure with where our equipment was with TRICON being a new – I wouldn’t say new organization by any means, but with a new manufacturer and kind of rebranded stuff – a lot of uncertainly as far as where we were.”

“We ended up being really good, and I was also developing myself and maybe not super confident in the adjustments I needed to put me over the edge from being a top-five truck to being a winning truck in the same weekend,” he added. “Just things like that. I feel like I’ve gotten a lot more confident in myself and comfortable in my equipment. Any extra reps and seat time is super important, and I feel like with these two seasons in my back pocket, it’s really helped me just find that comfort with my crew and also have basically the same roster of people on this No. 11 team for the last two years, so everyone is just more comfortable with each other and more confident.”

Heim enters the first race of the seven-round NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Playoffs at Darlington with a 62-point advantage over the cutline, a monumental gap that without some major issues would have the driver of the Safelite-sponsored entry moving to the second round of the post-season.

“I feel like our mindset as far as our No. 11 crew and the organization with TRICON is to prepare to the best of our ability in the same way that we have for most of the races this year and just to really hone in on everything and if not elevate everything to make sure that we cannot have any failures or anything crazy like that. And also, just continue to bring the speed that we have throughout the year.”

It’s never easy to win a championship, but Heim and TRICON Garage certainly have a leg up on the competition heading into the 2025 NASCAR Truck Series postseason. Can the driver, destined to eventually be racing on Sundays, hoist a championship trophy in Phoenix? Only time will tell.