When the 2026 season began, plenty of people pegged Connor Zilisch as the breakout start to watch. Instead, it’s Corey Heim, driving the No.67 for 23XI Racing on a part-time schedule, who has claimed the title. He’s now won two Cup Series races within his first 15 career starts, matching a feat no driver had pulled off since A.J. Foyt in 1965. And the second of those, a Crown Jewel victory at the legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway this past Sunday, came with a story behind it worth telling.

Corey Heim opened up on how he achieved his unexpected victory

Speaking to Corey LaJoie on the Stacking Pennies podcast, Heim broke down exactly how he found extra speed heading into qualifying.

“Yeah, since we had the practice on Friday, qualifying Saturday. I had way too much time to look at it,” Heim said. “I started looking at last year’s practice vs last year’s qualifying, then this year’s practice. I’m like, ‘Dang! We’re a good half a second faster just in practice.’ I would expect maybe half a second, maybe a little less. Little bit more of a pick-up in qualifying. When you started looking at the qualifying laps, you’re like ‘Dang! These guys barely use any brake in qualifying. If we’re picking up half a second, I bet we don’t even use it.'”

Heim had found his tactic: just floor it. He’d noticed many of his Cup Series peers barely touched the brakes during their qualifying runs, so he decided to take a page out of their book. He knew the risk, since a track like Indy usually demands drivers ease up somewhere, but he committed to it anyway, running his entire lap without braking at all.

It worked. Heim nailed the first two turns and realized partway through that he was on a genuinely good lap, though he admitted he started worrying about throwing it away with a late mistake.

“It’s so crazy! You’re like, ‘Oh my God! I nailed that! How do I mess this up?’ Then I sort of went through 3 and 4 80%, just to not throw the lap away, and ended up 7th.”

That seventh-place start already had people talking. What happened over the following 400 miles is exactly why it’s still the story of his season.

How did things progress from there?

Heim’s seventh-place qualifying effort impressed plenty of people, but heading into race day, other names were still pegged as favorites, including pole-sitter Carson Hocevar and championship contenders Tyler Reddick and Denny Hamlin, both of whom sat inside the top five for stretches of the race.

Ty Gibbs took Stage 1 after a one-lap shootout to the line, unusual timing but not a shock given how strong Joe Gibbs Racing has been all year. Heim ran with the lead pack throughout, finishing inside the top five for that opening stage. Stage 2 went to Ross Chastain ahead of Todd Gilliland, with Heim fifth. Then came the final stage, where Heim survived a handful of restarts before finally taking the lead from Christopher Bell on a frantic restart on Lap 127. From there, he held on.

“That was a damn handful,” Heim said afterward. “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 be in a lot of clean air throughout the day. So that was the hardest I’ve ever fought in my life just to make sure I focused on exits and keep him in dirty air.”

The win made him the youngest Brickyard 400 champion since Jeff Gordon in 1994, and the first part-time driver to post multiple Cup wins in a season since Davey Allison and Tim Richmond back in 1987. Since he’s a part-time driver, none of it counts toward the championship. But between this run and his 2025 Craftsman Truck Series title, it’s building a resume that’s hard to ignore.

“For a part-time driver, it looks like they are doing a pretty great job,” Denny Hamlin, 23XI’s co-owner, said afterward. Competition director Dave Rogers echoed the sentiment in Victory Lane, crediting Heim’s “maturity and his discipline.”

Heim steps into the No. 35 full-time for 23XI in 2027, and the rest of this season is his last stretch to build on that foundation before the pressure of a full Cup schedule begins. Whether he carries this into an impressive rookie campaign, or hits the kind of rough patch that’s defined Zilisch’s season, is still an open question. Speaking of Zilisch, whether he can turn his own year around in 2027 remains just as uncertain. Only time will tell for both of them.