Kevin Harvick warns 23XI about Corey Heim

It wasn’t the best evening for Corey Heim this past weekend at Nashville Superspeedway. He finished a disappointing P37, after making contact with Brad Keselowski while running in P12 and wrecking out on Lap 130.

Still, Kevin Harvick is backing the young wheelman. He believes it’s time for 23XI Racing to move Heim to the NASCAR Cup Series full-time, even if they don’t have a fourth charter from NASCAR. If they don’t they risk losing one of the more talented prospects in the sport to a different team.

“I don’t know why he’s there (in the Truck Series),” Harvick stated, via Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour. “… Even if you don’t have a charter, if you’re 23XI, just to keep him in the mix. I wouldn’t want to let that go. I think that I would figure it out. But he needs to start getting — he doesn’t need to race that truck.”

Evidently, Harvick believes Heim is simply spinning his wheels in the Truck Series, literally and figuratively. With four wins, ten top tens, eight top fives and 812 laps led, it’s tough to argue with that sentiment.

While Nashville was less-than-stellar, Heim’s past performances in the Cup Series has Harvick believing he could be a star. When the time comes for his transition to the highest level in NASCAR full-time, the former champ think he’ll be ready.

“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,” Harvick added. “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.”

It remains to be seen when Corey Heim moves to the Cup Series full-time, and whether or not 23XI Racing is his destination. One thing is for sure, the future is bright for the young driver with Kevin Harvick in his corner, wherever he ends up moving forward.