Kevin Harvick backs Corey Heim, bright future despite Nashville mistake

23XI Racing development driver Corey Heim made his fifth career NASCAR Cup Series start this past Sunday. Heim finished a disappointing 37th at Nashville Superspeedway, making contact with Brad Keselowski while running in 12th position and crashing out on Lap 130.

Kevin Harvick said on Tuesday’s “Happy Hour” podcast that Heim made a mistake. Heim is only 22 years old and Harvick said it’s part of the process when making the jump to Cup competition. Still, the FOX Sports analyst is buying stock in Heim’s future.

“The spotter kept telling him outside and he just made a mistake getting up the racetrack trying to take everything he can get and just misjudged,” Harvick said. “But those are all the experiences as much as we’ve talked about Corey Heim needing to be here already, you still see the rookie mistakes and the inexperience at the Cup level in scenarios like this. These are all things he’s gotta go through and in the end, I truly believe that Corey Heim will be a Cup Series winner.

“Once we get three to five years down the road, I think we’ll be talking about Corey Heim winning Cup races. Once they get the right crew chief and team around him and gets that 100 races under his belt — he’s already done better than most guys that step into the car in a short amount of time. But again, that’s not a fair judgement of how he’s going to do because until you’re in this grind every single week and have to deal with the sponsors and the media and the criticism at a level you’ve never experienced before in Trucks and Xfinity, I don’t know.

“It could mentally break him. I don’t think it will, based upon what I’ve seen so far and how he reacts to things, but it’s another level on the Cup side as to that pressure and things that go with this, especially when you have a bad race, and then you have another bad race and then it’s, ‘He’s not ready for this.’ How do you deal with that? Can you rebound and not care like [Carson] Hocevar? He doesn’t care. He can deal with the mental side of it.”

Corey Heim admits fault in contact with Brad Keselowski at Nashville

Heim knew he made a mistake in that moment. He made sure to apologize to Keselowski for the error.

“I’m pretty sure I just kind of cleared myself across the nose of [Keselowski]. A little bit too desperate,” Heim said after the race. “We were moving forward really quick, and I had a lot of confidence in my Camry. Thought I could clear him by the time I got to the wall. Just used too much racetrack, so sorry to those guys. It looks like I kind of ruined his day, too, and never want to do that.”

As Heim makes spot Cup starts for 23XI, he continues to dominate Truck Series competition. Heim currently pilots the No. 11 Tundra TRD Pro for Tricon Garage. Twelve races through the 2025 campaign, he is first in the points standings with four wins and 10 top 10s.