Corey Heim 'made the most of it' in fifth-place effort at Phoenix
Avondale, AZ- A stellar “rookie campaign” continues.
Although Corey Heim won’t have a proper full-time rookie season, he continues to impress in his part-time effort with 23XI, posting a fifth-place finish in the Freeway Insurance 500 at Phoenix Raceway.
A late race call to take two tires was the difference in a bad day.
"Bootie [Barker] made great adjustments all day. I think we gained like five from the two tires, and I picked up four more in the restart,” Heim said. “Certainly a learning day for me.”
Heim started the Freeway Insurance 500 on the back foot, timing 36th for Saturday’s qualifying session.
“Typically it's kind of just a grind because we have a bad qualifying metric, but we actually had a pretty good one this week and had a shot to qualify well and just completely missed three and four,” Heim said. Even with the mistake, it was evident Heim had speed, timing 11th with a 27.19s lap in practice ahead of teammates Riley Herbst and eventually race winner Tyler Reddick.
Through 60 laps, he gained 13 positions to finish Stage 1 in 23rd. From there, Heim stagnated as he struggled to make up any position and was forced to settle for a 23rd-place finish in Stage 2.
“There was one point in the race I saw him in the field, I knew he was kind of not quite where he needed to be yet,” Reddick said. “Just the way he goes about the day, about the race, he’s really sharp and he’s going to be extremely good.”
While Heim had a fast car, small mistakes kept him from moving forward.
“Stage one was really tough, missed the balance a little bit, and I made a lot of mistakes,” Heim said. “That every time we'd climb forward, I'd make a mistake, and we'd lose them.”
Over the course of the final stage, Heim drove to 15th before a caution on Lap 282 for Kyle Larson gave him a chance to bounce back from his early misfortune. A two-tire call from crew chief Bootie Barker allowed Heim to jump from 14th to 9th under the pit cycle. From there, he took advantage of the tire offset between the leaders, finding success along the high line to finish fifth.
“I truly think we made the most of it,” Heim said.
His fifth-place effort marked his fourth Top-10 and third Top-5 finish of the season. It cements a stellar part-time effort from Heim and the No. 67 Toyota Camry team, who already have two wins this season: The Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Anduril 250 around Naval Base Coronado.
“Corey does a lot of things on a very high level,” Reddick said. “To see, to hear he ran fifth, doesn’t surprise me one bit. That’s just how he goes about it.”
Heim’s part-time campaign wraps up at Homestead-Miami Speedway for the NASCAR Cup Series’ season finale on Sunday, November 7, on NBC.
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