Corey Heim, despite competing in just three of five NASCAR Truck Series races this season, sits atop the points standings. Heim, however, isn’t eligible to make the playoffs and race for a championship.

NASCAR will not grant Heim a waiver to qualify since he won’t be in the field for every Truck race in 2026. It’s a rule that Dale Earnhardt Jr. questions if NASCAR should do away with.

“The question I think is should there be the eligibility restriction? Now that we have the points system that we have, should we open it back up?” Earnhardt said on Tuesday’s Dale Jr. Download. “… Right now, drivers have to declare for a series and maybe we don’t do that anymore. We just say, ‘Yeah, you don’t have to declare. If you have enough starts, if you have enough points, if you make the playoffs, you make the playoffs.’”

Heim, 23, is the top prospect in the sport but doesn’t have a full-time ride this season. This is true despite him winning the 2025 Truck Series championship, a season in which he claimed a record 12 wins. Heim already has two Truck wins on the year. The only time he failed to get to Victory Lane, he finished P5 at EchoPark Speedway in Atlanta.

Corey Heim is the class of Truck Series field yet again

Heim isn’t eligible to race for back-to-back championships, which Earnhardt believes should change in the future. Notably, Cup Series drivers are barred from competing for O’Reilly and Truck championships as well. Earnhardt wants that rule to stay.

“This is definitely something NASCAR could probably do away with and nobody would really care. I don’t know why it’s in place right now,” Earnhardt said. “I don’t mind the intermingling between Truck and the O’Reilly series at all, but I do love how we have divided the Cup Series driver from these two series. They can take part, they can come play, but that’s the extent of it. That restriction is healthy for our team. That restriction is healthy for all full-time O’Reilly teams. We do love when the Cup racers come run in the O’Reilly Series because more people watch, but we do not love when a Cup guy can win a championship in the O’Reilly Series because then he comes down and wins 12 races.

“[Those are] 12 races that I need to win, that other teams that run in the series full-time need to win. That eats into our budget and changes out business model. … I would love for that not to change. But I think the O’Reilly and Truck is a different beast altogether. I don’t mind a Truck guy running with us every week to run double duty, he can try to win a championship in both. Hell, we’ll employ a guy to drive one of our damn cars if it works out.”