by Reid Scearce
Brickyard 400 racing falls flat regardless of the NASCAR Cup Sequence driver Corey Heim’s historic win as a part-time driver for 23XI Racing this season.
Corey Heim earned the respect of kissing the bricks final Sunday on the historic Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The 24-year-old part-time driver of 23XI Racing’s No. 67 Toyota scored his second win in simply 15 profession begins. Nevertheless, scratching beneath the fast floor is a narrative of a race dominated by soiled air, monitor place, and nearly no passing. Whereas Heim’s generational expertise is simple, the successful automotive additionally benefited from the Subsequent Gen automotive’s aerodynamics on the historic 2.5-mile oval, making passing exceedingly tough and irritating drivers and followers alike.
Brickyard 400 Falls Flat
Whereas the venue supplied the everyday status related to the Brickyard, statistically, the 160-lap crown jewel race was the least aggressive and dynamic race of the 2026 NASCAR Cup Sequence season to date.
The race featured solely 15 lead adjustments amongst 11 drivers. Each a type of lead adjustments was purely due to pit technique cycles and restarts. Outdoors of the said situations, not a single go for the lead occurred beneath regular inexperienced flag situations.
Inexperienced-flag passes, and whole go metrics at Indianapolis ranked close to the underside amongst all 22 points-paying Cup races contested to date in 2026. Many race followers on social media expressed frustration that they might not recall a single green-flag go anyplace within the area exterior of, as soon as once more, restarts and pit cycles.
Monitor place was paramount, however to a ridiculous diploma. Clear air on the entrance of the sphere was price an excessive benefit over vehicles making an attempt to run within the draft of these forward. Heim led a race-high 58 laps—together with the ultimate 33. In response to knowledge from Jayski, Heim’s common lead over Christopher Bell was solely 0.25 to 0.35 seconds within the closing laps. But he managed to keep up it all through your complete closing stint purely on aero superiority.
Eric Estepp provided a blunt evaluation of the racing product throughout his weekly race recap on his YouTube present Out of the Groove:
“This was the worst racing product I’ve seen this whole NASCAR Cup Sequence season, and a few of it’s the monitor—one-lane, flat corners. I don’t suppose it’s effectively suited to inventory automotive racing, frankly, however a variety of it, after all, is the Subsequent Gen automotive, which is abominable in soiled air.”
Driver Assessments
Most of the afternoon’s chasers shared the identical gripe concerning the problem posed by soiled air. Runner-up Christopher Bell, who logged his sixth second-place end of the season, famous throughout his post-race interview with TNT Sports activities that the one method he may have received was if the chief made a serious error.
“Truthfully, I didn’t suppose I’d be capable to get there in any respect,” Bell admitted post-race. “My guys had been telling me he was going free and I knew actually that…my solely alternative was going to be a mistake from him. I simply wanted one bobble.”
Third-place finisher Joey Logano, who ran behind Heim and Bell the ultimate run, felt he didn’t have a sensible shot of overtaking the chief with out a front-row restart place.
“I used to be sooner than them, however I acquired three-car lengths again, and that was it. I misplaced the air. I couldn’t go quick anymore,” mentioned Logano in his post-race interview on pit street. “I wanted monitor place. Monitor place received the race. You needed to be on the entrance row, and we had been one row again.”
The aerodynamic limitations of the package deal had been important to Sunday’s racing. Nonetheless, that doesn’t take away from the talent it took for Corey Heim to stay out entrance, particularly whereas operating a part-time schedule. The youngest Brickyard 400 winner since Jeff Gordon in 1994, Heim struggled with a loose-handling automotive because the monitor floor cooled, forcing him to keep up a line that saved the drivers behind him in turbulent air. After overtaking his automotive proprietor, Denny Hamlin, for the lead on the ultimate restart on Lap 127, Heim drove his Toyota Camry for the ultimate 34 consecutive laps with minimal errors.
“That was a rattling handful,” Heim instructed reporters on the start-finish line following his victory burnout. “I used to be hanging on for expensive life as soon as the shade went down and the tempo picked up. My automotive acquired actually free… That was the toughest I’ve ever fought in my life to only make sure that I centered on exits and saved them in soiled air.”
The Dialogue Continues
Whereas there’ll undoubtedly be conversations about aero-package tweaks for flat ovals sooner or later, Corey Heim’s show of race administration, with very restricted Cup Sequence seat time, stays actually spectacular. Nevertheless, NASCAR has an infinite quantity of labor forward if the Brickyard 400 is to stay a race that followers genuinely anticipate, somewhat than one which lingers solely due to its previous status and historical past. Objectively, this week’s race was a chore to look at, and nobody within the NASCAR business desires a repeat subsequent yr.
