Corey Heim spent Sunday morning talking about being more aggressive on his restarts. By Sunday evening he had shown everyone what that meant — including the man who co-owns his car.
The 24-year-old part-time Cup driver made a daring outside move to pass Denny Hamlin on the final restart with 35 laps to go at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, then held off the hard-charging cars of Christopher Bell and Joey Logano to capture his first Brickyard 400. Heim beat Bell by 0.287 seconds and Logano, the previous week's winner, by 0.972 seconds to become the first Cup driver to win twice in his first 15 career starts since A.J. Foyt in 1965.
Like Foyt, Heim did not even need a full-time ride to do it. He has won twice this season despite running only a partial 23XI Racing schedule.
"Just had to be aggressive, man, it's for the win," Heim said. "I would have to see it back to see if I really did anything wrong. You know, he has every right to be frustrated with me, but don't get me wrong, I just had to be on top of it."
The pass came at the expense of Hamlin, who co-owns 23XI. Hamlin fell from first to fifth on the restart and never recovered, extending his winless streak at Indianapolis to 18 — the Brickyard 400 remains the only one of NASCAR's four crown-jewel races he has never won. He blamed his own pushers rather than his part-time driver.
"I mean everyone's trying to fight to win the race, and you know you're clear by an inch, you're going to take that inch," Hamlin said. "It's really the 20 and (Bell) and the 19 (Chase Briscoe) not orchestrating good pushes there and we came detached for a long time. I thought the 20 was on board with giving us a push, it was just way too early before the restart zone."
"That was a damn handful," Heim said. "I was hanging on for dear life once the shade went down and the pace picked up. My car got really loose and I never really got a lot of clean air throughout the day, so that was the hardest I've ever fought in my life to make sure I focused on the exits and get through dirty air."
Bell, Hamlin's Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, took the runner-up spot with no complaints.
"It's a good second place," Bell said. "We've had a lot of bad second-place finishes, but this is a good one with where we were after qualifying. When we had the restart on the second row, I was really happy with our position. Really proud of our team, we pulled together a really good day."
The day was rougher elsewhere. Defending Cup champion Kyle Larson saw his winless streak reach 36 after a flat left-rear tyre pitched his Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet into the wall out of Turn 3 during the opening stage. He was the first car out and finished 39th.
"We just had a tire let go. I wouldn't say pushing had anything to do with it," Larson said. "Just a little bit of bad luck, I guess."
Hamlin at least extended his championship points lead over Heim's 23XI teammate Tyler Reddick, who finished 10th. After 16 straight weeks of racing, the Cup series now takes a break before returning at Iowa's 0.875-mile oval on August 9.
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