{"id":591884,"date":"2026-04-09T05:59:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T05:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/591884\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T05:59:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T05:59:18","slug":"dale-earnhardt-jr-reacts-to-corey-heim-leading-nascar-truck-series-despite-ineligibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/591884\/","title":{"rendered":"Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to Corey Heim leading NASCAR Truck Series despite ineligibility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Corey Heim, despite competing in just three of five NASCAR<\/a> Truck Series races this season, sits atop the points standings. Heim, however, isn\u2019t eligible to make the playoffs and race for a championship. <\/p>\n

NASCAR will not grant Heim a waiver to qualify since he won\u2019t be in the field for every Truck race in 2026. It\u2019s a rule that Dale Earnhardt Jr. questions if NASCAR should do away with. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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?\u201d Earnhardt said on Tuesday\u2019s Dale Jr. Download<\/a>. \u201c\u2026 Right now, drivers have to declare for a series and maybe we don\u2019t do that anymore. We just say, \u2018Yeah, you don\u2019t have to declare. If you have enough starts, if you have enough points, if you make the playoffs, you make the playoffs.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Heim, 23, is the top prospect in the sport but doesn\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n

Corey Heim is the class of Truck Series field yet again<\/p>\n

Heim isn\u2019t 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\u2019Reilly and Truck championships as well. Earnhardt wants that rule to stay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is definitely something NASCAR could probably do away with and nobody would really care. I don\u2019t know why it\u2019s in place right now,\u201d Earnhardt said. \u201cI don\u2019t mind the intermingling between Truck and the O\u2019Reilly 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\u2019s the extent of it. That restriction is healthy for our team. That restriction is healthy for all full-time O\u2019Reilly teams. We do love when the Cup racers come run in the O\u2019Reilly Series because more people watch, but we do not love when a Cup guy can win a championship in the O\u2019Reilly Series because then he comes down and wins 12 races. <\/p>\n

\u201c[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. \u2026 I would love for that not to change. But I think the O\u2019Reilly and Truck is a different beast altogether. I don\u2019t mind a Truck guy running with us every week to run double duty, he can try to win a championship in both. Hell, we\u2019ll employ a guy to drive one of our damn cars if it works out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Corey Heim, despite competing in just three of five NASCAR Truck Series races this season, sits atop the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-591884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}