Kevin Harvick Declares He “Truly Believes” Corey Heim Will Be Soon a Cup Series Winner

Ex-NASCAR Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick has given his verdict on the bright future of 23XI Racing’s Corey Heim.

Kevin Harvick Declares He “Truly Believes” Corey Heim Will Be Soon a Cup Series Winner

Kevin Harvick and Corey Heim (Via IMAGO)

The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season saw Corey Heim making multiple outing in the top tier, while being the front runner for the Truck Series championship, showing 23XI Racing was right to invest in him. But his latest Cup attempt at Nashville ended badly, with crash involving Brad Keselowski. This invited a lot of criticism, but 2014 Cup champion Kevin Harvick got his back.

In the latest episode of his Happy Hour podcast, Kevin Harvick analyzed Corey Heim’s performance and the backlash over the clash. He pointed out that the rookie mistakes are part of the learning process and ones the Toyota Racing prodigy has enough experience in his bag, he will surely end up as a race winner.

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.

Kevin Harvick said via Happy Hour podcast.

The veteran doesn’t expect the win to come in the immediate future, instead he is giving the youngster three to five years to start being a consistent winner. Since he has performed much better than the full-time racers in the garage, he will be a front-runner once he has raced around 100 events in the top-tier.

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.

Kevin Harvick added.

23XI Racing co-owner Denny Hamlin has the same feelings about the youngster and in a recent interview, he explained that the only thing stopping them from promoting Heim, is having only three seats. But he is confident that the Truck Series driver is the right person to lead 23XI to success in the future.

Kevin Harvick explains the mental pressure waiting Corey Heim in the Cup series

In the same conversation, Kevin Harvick shared his thoughts on the media pressure and social media abuse that is awaiting Corey Heim in the top division. The youngster has to learn dealing with media and sponsors soon.

Kevin Harvick
Kevin Harvick (Via @KevinHarvick/X)

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.

Kevin Harvick said.

Then Harvick pointed out that the pressure sometimes breaks drivers, but doesn’t expect the TRD drivers to be one of them as he has seen enough resilience from the youngster over the years. But it will be tough to navigate the pressure after bad races like Nashville.

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…

Kevin Harvick added.

The comments from the ex-Stewart Haas Racing driver shows how much he respects the youngster as a racer and the expectation he has of Heim, just like 23XI boss Denny Hamlin. It would be interesting to see how soon it would take the veteran’s predictions to come true.

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