In addition to being the oldest and winningest active driver in the NASCAR Cup Series, Denny Hamlin is a shrewd team owner who in that role has become a sounding board and a reliable source of sage counsel.
So he was a little surprised when protégé Corey Heim went radio silent last week ahead of the series’ inaugural race at U.S. Naval Base Coronado.
“I asked Corey before the race, ‘This is the first week you haven’t called me for advice. You didn’t think I’d bring anything to the table?’” Hamlin said with a smile. “Apparently, he was good.”
Indeed, Heim proved he had it handled with his upset victory Sunday in the 23XI Racing No. 67 Toyota. By winning in only his 13th career start on NASCAR’s top level, the rising star from the Atlanta suburb of Marietta reaffirmed that Hamlin has a keen eye for spotting talent while taking risks in building 23XI with NBA legend Michael Jordan, who co-owns the team with the Joe Gibbs Racing driver and Curtis Polk, the basketball great’s business adviser.
Four years ago, Hamlin and Co. showed faith in Tyler Reddick by signing him more than 18 months before the driver’s contract with Richard Childress Racing expired. Reddick escaped the deal’s final year to join 23XI in 2023, made it to the penultimate round of the playoffs as one of the final eight drivers in the championship hunt that year, then truly validated Hamlin’s faith in 2024 by finishing as one of the four title-eligible contenders in the Cup Series finale.
Reddick was just ninth in the final standings last year, but the 30-year-old driver opened this season by winning the Daytona 500 and took the checkered flag in four other races among the first nine on the schedule. The Cup Series points leader was on his way to a sixth win Sunday on the street course south of downtown San Diego before he got outdueled by Heim, who will move into Cup Series competition on a full-time basis in 2027 as a teammate of Reddick, who drives the No. 45 Toyota, and 32-year-old Bubba Wallace, who drives the No. 23 Toyota and has been with 23XI since it launched in 2021.
With three laps to go, Heim took the lead from Reddick, who was saddled with a flat tire and had to settle for 25th, his second-worst finish of 2026. Wallace was the runner-up, though more than 10 seconds behind Heim, in the 23XI veteran’s second top-three showing in the past three races.
“Really surprised,” Hamlin, who wound up 14th in the JGR No. 11 Toyota, said about Heim’s breakout performance. “Now if you would have asked me in the middle of the race, I wouldn’t have been that surprised. I got to race around him enough to know he had plenty of speed.”
As a top-level driver with 64 points victories in his Cup Series career (including four this season, and three in a row before Heim ended his streak), the 45-year-old Hamlin has an edge over other team owners because he can scout prospects with a firsthand perspective while also speaking their language behind the wheel.
After winning the third-tier Truck Series championship last season, Heim passed on full-time rides with other Cup Series teams this year and chose to race a partial schedule while waiting for a seat to open at 23XI in 2027. He is set to take over the No. 35 Toyota from 27-year-old Riley Herbst, whose contract is up this year.
“I always just had a gut feeling that 23XI was where I wanted to be,” said Heim, who turns 24 on July 5. “Just so much support from Denny and M.J. I talk to them on a very regular basis, and I’ve always felt like family. Their preparation is the best in the industry. It probably would have been advantageous to be full time as soon as possible, but my gut just told me to stay with it.”
A sellout crowd of 50,000 fans gathered on the active military base to witness the third first-time Cup Series winner this season. NASCAR chief operating officer Ben Kennedy, who previously took the Cup Series to inaugural events on the streets of downtown Chicago and a temporary track inside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, said 67% of the attendees were NASCAR first-timers.
Though it’s unclear if Naval Base Coronado will be on the 2027 schedule, Kennedy vowed to stay aggressive in the future by scheduling at least one annual street race with an eye toward new metropolitan areas and military bases.
“There are a lot of strategic markets across the country that we would love to be in that have large military bases as well,” Kennedy said. “So we’ve talked about the Pacific Northwest, Colorado, the Northeast.”
There were some first-year hiccups for the track at Coronado. Because of crashes in the Truck, O’Reilly Auto Parts and Cup Series races, the red flag was displayed on three consecutive days for repairs to the temporary walls.
The weekend in the San Diego area drew 125,000 spectators over three days, but NASCAR limited capacity because of concerns about traffic on Coronado Island. After fan complaints Friday and Saturday, NASCAR summoned extra food trucks and staff Sunday to help with concession stands and bathroom access.
“One of the things we’re most mindful of is the amount of people that you can, frankly, get on and off the base and still have a good fan experience,” Kennedy said. “We want to make sure that ingress and egress was palpable.”
The Cup Series remains in California for its next race but moves nearly 550 miles north for Sunday’s run on the permanent road course at Sonoma Raceway, where Trackhouse Racing’s Shane Van Gisbergen was the winner last year.