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\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
NASCAR driver Corey Heim gave his honest take on Bubba Wallace after a costly pit-road speeding penalty at Phoenix Raceway.<\/p>\n
Corey Heim said Wednesday that NASCAR teammate Bubba Wallace has moved past the Phoenix speeding penalty that cost him a shot at his first win of 2026, and 23XI Racing is heading to Talladega with fresh optimism.<\/p>\n
Wallace led 52 laps Sunday, his most in any race this season, yet left Phoenix winless once again, which leaves the team one week to regroup before the unpredictable YellaWood 500.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s really optimistic, especially after Tyler was able to get back to victory lane,\u201d Heim said Wednesday on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, as quoted by On3\u2018s Jamie Oakes<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tyler Reddick of 23XI won Sunday\u2019s Freeway Insurance 500, his sixth victory of 2026 and the end of a 23-race winless stretch, according to NASCAR.com<\/a>. Heim finished fifth.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Bubba Wallace\u2019s Phoenix Speeding Penalty<\/p>\n \u201cSame with Bubba, I mean, he\u2019s had great speed, but one thing or another will happen and they just aren\u2019t able to close these things out,\u201d Heim said.<\/p>\n A caution for Kyle Larson\u2019s crash sent the leaders to pit road with 27 laps remaining. Wallace took four tires, left in sixth place and drew a pit road speeding penalty that dropped him out of the top 10. He finished 17th and remains winless since the Brickyard 400 in 2025, according to RACER\u2018s Kelly Crandall<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cOur team is so good at finding all the gray areas to operate in and find our limits, and I think I exposed it a little bit too much around the corner,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cCorner pitting is really, really tough \u2026 just with the lack of visibility that you have.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI hate it for our team,\u201d Wallace continued. \u201cIt\u2019s been really fun driving Toyotas this year, but I just can\u2019t seem to close the deal out. Three more to go.\u201d<\/p>\n Heim saw a different mood in the shop this week. <\/p>\n \u201cYou can just tell he\u2019s so refreshed to have a winning race car at Phoenix with that place kind of being a trouble area for 23XI in the past,\u201d Heim said.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t 23XI Racing Outlook for Talladega<\/p>\n Reddick now sits seventh in the Chase standings, 56 points behind leader Larson. <\/p>\n \u201cIf we can have a calm \u2019Dega, get stage points, finish with a car in one piece, I think we\u2019ll have another good points day,\u201d Reddick said, according to the NASCAR Wire Service<\/a>.<\/p>\n Heim will not be in the Cup field Sunday. <\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the day, it is Talladega, so we\u2019ll see what happens,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Wallace was born Oct. 8, 1993, in Mobile, Alabama, and raised in Concord, North Carolina<\/a>. By age 12, he had won 35 races in an entry-level Bandolero series. He made his Cup debut in 2017 with Richard Petty Motorsports and joined 23XI Racing, co-owned by Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan<\/a>, in 2021.<\/p>\n That October, Wallace won the YellaWood 500 at Talladega, the first Cup victory by a Black driver since Wendell Scott in 1963. He added a Kansas win in 2022 and the 2025 Brickyard 400.<\/p>\n Heim was born July 5, 2002, and is a Marietta, Georgia, native, according to the Marietta Daily Journal<\/a>. He won the 2025 Craftsman Truck Series title with a record 12 victories, and 23XI plans to move him to the No. 35 Toyota full time in 2027, according to NASCAR.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n Heim won his first Cup race June 21 at Naval Base Coronado, finishing 10.365 seconds ahead of Wallace in 23XI\u2019s first 1-2 finish, according to Engine Builder Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n The YellaWood 500 at Talladega gets the green flag Sunday at 2 p.m. EDT on NBC.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t \n\t\t\tJonathan Vankin<\/a> JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist who covers MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, boxing, golf, and Olympic sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Newspaper and Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering the Olympics, pro baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty NASCAR driver Corey Heim gave his honest take on Bubba Wallace after a costly pit-road speeding penalty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":941922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-941921","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\/941921","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=941921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/NASCAR-Phoenix-TV-Ratings-Down.jpg\")
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