NASCAR is ever-evolving. For the better? Yes, in many aspects, except for one. Mark Martin admits that it’s quickly heading in a direction no one might expect. Sustaining oneself in the top-tier stock car racing series has always been challenging, but it appears to have become more difficult now.

Motorsports is expensive. There’s no doubt. Purchasing and maintaining cars is a task. However, this is not how NASCAR used to be back when Martin was still young.

“For me, racing in the 70s was a different era with my Late Model,” the NASCAR legend said on Mark Martin Archive. “Being so young, I got all product. After I had won my first ASA championship in ’78, I got a free chassis, and then I got tires from Firestone. I got wheels, shocks, springs. I mean, everything that went on the car was free except for the engines, and you could do it off the purse then because of that, because you had no overhead hardly at all.”

However, the scenario has massively changed now. Keeping talent aside, teams in the junior series now want drivers with strong financial backing or sponsorship. This is, of course, to help them maintain running their cars. But it could negatively affect the sport in the long run.

Martin remarked that in the current era of racing, not having a sponsor can be extremely difficult, as teams will not pick drivers solely on talent.

Back in 2022, driver Garrett Smithley admitted he wished he could “focus on the racing part,” revealing that he did a lot of sponsorship searches on his own in his free time, and that it wasn’t easy to find funding.

“I wish it was a little bit less stressful sometimes,” Smithley said.

“There’s so much competition on the product side, and it’s just a lot tougher, and then because it’s so expensive,” Martin continued. “If you don’t have money tied to you somehow, either through family or friends or whatever, you’re just fighting an uphill battle. It’s very, very tough.”

Take Corey Heim’s case, for example. One of the most promising drivers, who dominated the Truck Series, set new records, and found himself without a full-time seat for 2026. While there are multiple reasons for this, a major one is the lack of a strong financial background.

“I don’t know deep history of Corey Heim, but obviously, he doesn’t have a lot of money attached to him,” Martin added.

Heim’s case in this situation speaks volumes.

What happened to Corey Heim?

Corey Heim dominated the track, especially in the Truck Series. Racing for Tricon Garage in 2025, the 23-year-old won a whopping twelve races, breaking Greg Biffle’s previous nine-win record from 1999. He also won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship that year. He definitely seemed to be the driver for the upcoming season. If not for the NOAPS or the Cup Series, fans expected him to continue racing in the Truck Series.

However, this is when the news dropped. No team signed him full-time for the 2026 season. Needless to say, it didn’t fit well with the fans. The backlash on social media was unreal, but that didn’t change anything… he is still without a full-time seat heading into the next season.

Corey Heim will get a few Cup Series starts this year, thanks to his development deal with 23XI Racing; however, the team will run Riley Herbst full-time, who is also understood to bring additional sponsorship. 

The major issue with Heim doesn’t seem to lie within his talent. He has proven himself to be one of the most competitive drivers in the garage. Even if his two-win season as a part-time driver in 2022, or his four consecutive Championship appearances, weren’t enough, perhaps his 2025 title should’ve been more than enough.

As Martin explained, the sport has become increasingly difficult to survive in due to the money-over-talent narrative.