Motorsports
NASCAR News: 23XI Racing star opens up on infamous Carson Hocevar wreck
23XI Racing driver Corey Heim has opened up on one of the toughest moments of his young racing career.
The 22-year-old was all set up to take the Truck Series championship in 2023, having already won the regular season title despite missing a race with illness, until being wrecked by Carson Hocevar in the championship race.
Heim wrecked Hocevar in retaliation and was punished with a 25 point drop plus a five-figure fine, with Christian Eckes eventually taking the title in one of the wildest races in Truck Series history, with four overtime restarts.
The young driver has been racing part-time in the Cup Series with 23XI this year alongside his Truck Series commitments, and opened up to The Athletic about what he admitted was a challenging time.
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Heim: 2023 title wreck blown out of proportion
“The 2023 championship in the Trucks, just with Carson (Hocevar) and the whole mess there. It was just a big rollercoaster of emotions and the public perception. For the most part, I’ve been a really clean driver.
“I don’t really cause a lot of crap, but being under that microscope with 30 to go in a Truck (championship) race and everything happening the way it did, it put me in a bad light. I had to handle that because I pride myself on racing the way I want to be race, so seeing people come crashing down on me for retaliating was tough.
“The good part of it was I had the whole offseason to just get over it. It wasn’t like I had to go racing next week with that mindset. But from a broad perspective, I feel like it was a warranted thing, but I had to just understand I was under a microscope, and it got blown out of proportion a little bit from my standpoint.”
Heim has absolutely dominated the Truck Series in 2025, already claiming four wins and four more top-three finishes through 12 races, putting him well over 100 points clear of the rest of the field.
He could see more Cup Series action than expected in the near future too, with 23XI in serious danger of losing drivers Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick after an appeals court ruled that NASCAR could strip the team’s charters.
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