Truckin’ Thursdays: All Eyes on Corey Heim for Silly Season

The NASCAR Cup Series Silly Season for 2025 was kicked into high gear when it was announced that Stewart-Haas Racing will shut down its entire program at the end of the 2024 season.

With its demise comes the sale of three of its four charters. While the charter agreement is still being worked out for 2025 and beyond, there are still some players in the bid for its charters.

Those bids could affect the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Silly Season – and as it stands, really the only major puzzle piece in question for 2025 for the Truck Series.

Much like the end of the 2023 season, it’s largely been thought that Corey Heim will not be in the Truck Series come the following season. His talent level is too high to just keep him in the Truck Series. It’s pretty much guaranteed at this point that Heim will move up the NASCAR ladder after surprising everyone and staying in the Truck Series for 2024.

Heim was seen as the favorite to take over John Hunter Nemechek‘s No. 20 NASCAR Xfinity Series seat at Joe Gibbs Racing for 2024 when Nemechek was promoted back to Cup. However, Heim decided to stay another year in the Truck Series. That move directly caused Jesse Love, widely seen as Heim’s heir in the No. 11 TRICON Garage truck and Toyota’s top prospect, to leave Toyota and join Chevrolet, driving Richard Childress Racing’s No. 2 in Xfinity.

This year is different though. To keep Heim in the Truck Series for a third full-time season would be wasting his talent. He has to move up. However, unlike last year, when we all thought he’d go Xfinity Series racing, he may move straight to the top.

Heim currently serves as the reserve driver and sim driver for two different Cup teams – 23XI Racing and Legacy Motor Club. Both teams have been rumored to purchase a charter from SHR and open a third full-time team.

As my colleague Michael Massie mentioned, Heim could be in the running for both teams. While 23XI has been mentioned as the larger candidate for an SHR charter, it’s difficult to rule out either organization.

Heim has already made two Cup starts this season, both in Legacy’s No. 43 while Erik Jones sat out with a broken back. He will also make a start with 23XI at Nashville Superspeedway this Sunday (June 30), driving the part-time No. 50 as race two of the three-race celebration of Mobil 1’s 50th anniversary (Kamui Kobayashi drove the car at Circuit of the Americas).

Ready for what's next in Nashville 🎟️ pic.twitter.com/ic0ZZ8dypU

— 23XI Racing (@23XIRacing) May 10, 2024

It wouldn’t be too surprising if Nashville was supposed to be Heim’s official debut before being called into action by Legacy.

That being said, with Heim making starts with both teams, if both teams end up with an additional charter from SHR, the bidding war for Heim is going to be tough, as both teams would probably benefit greatly from his services. Legacy could potentially make a greater push to get him, given its struggles in year one of switching to Toyota.

Much like Zane Smith and Carson Hocevar this year, it’s more than likely that we will see Heim racing on Sundays next season. In fact, it would be nothing short of an outrage if Heim isn’t racing on Sundays full-time in 2025.

The team for which he races, however, is anyone’s guess at the moment, at least until the charter agreement and SHR’s charters get sorted out.

Now, should Heim move up to the Cup Series next season, the big question would be around who should replace Heim in TRICON’s flagship No. 11. That question gets complicated when you realize that Toyota really has nobody.

Okay, maybe not ‘nobody.’ It has William Sawalich. Sawalich would be a nice fit, given he’ll have made 15 career Truck Series starts, all with TRICON, by season’s end. But if the plans he disclosed to Frontstretch last season remain true, he’s supposed to be going full-time Xfinity Series racing next season. So that rules him out.

So if you exclude Sawalich, who exactly does Toyota Racing Development have that is ready to move up? Looking at the full-time Toyota teams in the ARCA Menards Series, only two such teams exist: Joe Gibbs Racing and Venturini Motorsports.

JGR’s No. 18 is split between the aforementioned Sawalich and Tanner Gray, who already drives the No. 15 for TRICON. So no one for JGR’s ARCA team is applicable. That leaves Venturini as the only team to feed TRICON a truck-ready prospect.

The problem is, there really is no such candidate.

The team’s current full-time single-driver teams consist of the No. 15 of Kris Wright, the No. 22 of Amber Balcaen, and the No. 25 of Toni Breidinger. We’ll get to the rotational teams in a minute.

Prior to 2024, Wright had four part-time seasons (two of which were supposed to be full-time before parting ways with his teams) in Truck Series competition and failed to score a finish higher than 12th in his 46 starts. He is making two starts with TRICON, one of which resulted in a 30th-place finish at Texas Motor Speedway. Unless he goes out and wins at Pocono Raceway, the likelihood of him landing that ride is incredibly slim.

Balcaen, meanwhile, is only in the midst of her second full-time season in ARCA. While she has put up very respectable results, she hasn’t done anything that screams ‘promotion.’ Of course, there are still 12 races left in the ARCA season. Perhaps a string of top fives and even wins might be enough to convince TRICON that she could be the heir to the flagship machine. Even still, with zero Truck starts, her lack of experience could be the biggest drawback.

Of the three full-time drivers at Venturini, Breidinger seems the most ready for promotion. In 51 ARCA starts, she has 19 top 10s – nearly a 40% success rate. Generally, she’s able to bring the car home in one piece, and would also bring a lot of sponsors, publicity and marketing to TRICON (assuming Safelite doesn’t leave or scale back sponsorship), with sponsors such as Celsius, Raising Cane’s and Victoria’s Secret.

She’s also made four starts with TRICON, earning a best finish of 15th in her debut at Kansas Speedway last spring. She has some experience and enough talent that it could be a great developmental project for TRICON to take on for 2025. But again, is that something TRICON is willing to do, or is it focused forward on a championship at all times?

Then there’s Venturini’s rotational drivers in the Nos. 20 and 55. Dean Thompson, who has run one race apiece in both numbers, already drives the No. 5 for TRICON. Aside from him and Gus Dean, who seems content with his part-time ARCA gig, all of its drivers will probably go through a season of ARCA first before considering Truck Series starts. Isabella Robusto, Brent Crews and Gio Ruggiero all look to be high prospects for Toyota – they just need more experience in lower series before heading to NASCAR’s top levels.

One exception is maybe – and a strong maybe – Jake Finch. Throughout all three branches of ARCA, Finch has made 20 starts (technically 24, as two of his starts counted for ARCA and ARCA East starts). Only twice has he finished outside the top 10. Of those 18 top 10s, eight are top fives, two of which are wins.

If there is anybody who could potentially jump up to Trucks from Venturini’s part-time stable without a full season in ARCA, it’s Finch. It’s clear he has raw talent. Not to mention, he brings sponsorship from Phoenix Construction, which is owned by his father, longtime NASCAR team owner James Finch.

Sean Hingorani also returns to Venturini on a part-time basis. The 2023 ARCA Menards Series West champion has experience in all three of ARCA’s branches. His relationship with Venturini got turbulent after his incident with Thompson at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in last year’s ARCA race, but if he can rebuild his relationship with Toyota, he could also be one to watch for the seat.

But in reality, there is no real candidate from Toyota that is ready for promotion at the moment. So that means we could possibly see TRICON poach drivers from other teams. Take your pick on who that could be. Or perhaps it scoops up a SHR driver left without a ride.

Ryan Preece has not only driven for Toyota (and won) but he’s also driven for TRICON (and also won). There are connections from all sides there, and with Preece largely thought to be the odd one out for any silly season chicanery in 2025 following SHR’s demise, it could be a perfect match – provided Preece is willing to move back down and hit the reset button.

The final option, which is highly unlikely but still possible, is that TRICON absorbs the No. 11 team and refocuses its efforts on its other teams. Keep in mind, TRICON runs five full-time trucks. And all are at least slightly competitive. That’s a lot of money, a lot of resources and a lot of employees to run that ship.

Why not absorb the No. 11 team, and put its money and resources from that team into another team such as Taylor Gray, who is knocking on the door of a win and looks to be the next driver in line for promotion behind Heim. Gray’s No. 17 could then become the flagship team (as it was before), and it could run an even more competitive four-truck team.

The No. 1 could still be rotational (hell, incorporate Heim into that lineup) and then Thompson and the Brothers Gray could get some additional resources to elevate them to the next level.

If there’s one thing predictable about the silly season, it’s that it’s completely unpredictable. Toyota and TRICON know this, and they both have to be thinking about their next steps (if they haven’t already) because it has to have a contingency plan in place if and when Heim moves up.

Truckin’ Tidbits

• Freedom Racing Enterprises announced on June 24 that Mike Hillman Jr. will assume crew chief duties for Spencer Boyd‘s No. 76. Team manager Jeff Hammond (yes, that Jeff Hammond) has served as interim crew chief the previous nine races following Greg Ely’s departure. Hillman started the season as crew chief for Bayley Currey‘s No. 41.
• Rush Truck Centers will sponsor Clint Bowyer‘s one-off at Nashville, with his No. 7 sporting a paint scheme similar to Bowyer’s final Cup Series ride with Rush Truck Centers at the fall Phoenix Raceway event in 2020.