NASCAR star Corey Heim opens up on 'dirty' racing and Carson Hocevar social media spat

NASCAR star Corey Heim has opened up on a pair of recent incidents with rivals Carson Hocevar and Kaden Honeycutt.

The 23XI Racing star's beef with Hocevar is long-established, running back to the time they both spent together in the Truck Series, while the back-and-forth with Honeycutt went public more recently.

Honeycutt was unhappy with the way Heim raced him at Michigan last month, to which Heim said when informed 'Get thicker skin and deal with it. That’s my advice to him'.

In an appearance on Speed with Kevin Harvick and Will Buxton this week, Heim defended his racing style and his public comments, insisting that if he's raced fair, he'll race fair right back and only 'race dirty' against drivers he feels have done the same to him.

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Heim: Race me dirty, I'll race you dirty back

“I feel like I’ve always been a guy that’s racing people the way they race me, you know, and I’m a fair game guy," he said. "If there’s a guy that has raced me extremely clean and I wreck him on accident, I will be the most apologetic guy ever. And if he wants to talk his crap, I’ll be like, that is more than fair. I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job of displaying that.

“And like, if there’s guys that want to race me dirty, I’m going to race them dirty back. And if they don’t like it, then get thicker skin. You know, but I feel like my racing code, if you will, is very fair.

“You look at Bristol earlier this year, we got taken out by [Christian] Eckes, but I feel like he’s always been a very fair guy and he did it on accident. So I was like, yeah, I mean, he didn’t do it on purpose. I’m not mad at him.

“But if you got guys that are wrecking me on a weekly basis and they just continue to do it, I’ll probably speak up about it or maybe get them back if I can. But yeah, I feel like my racing code is pretty fair.”

He also discussed his Twitter back-and-forth with Hocevar after the pair were involved in another incident at Coronado, on the way to Heim's first Cup Series win.

The race winner typically dials into Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s podcast the following day but, on the week that Hocevar was stepping in that day as guest host, Heim skipped the show before getting into some banter with Michigan's fastest Twitch streamer.

Asked whether it was him writing up his side of the interactions or a social media professional, he said: “Yeah, I was on it. I’m not a big social media guy, but I feel like with all the traction that whole interaction got, I felt like I had to fire back a little bit.

“And they’re giving me so much crap about not calling in [for the interview with Hocevar]. I didn’t even hear about the whole thing because I was in Costa Mesa the whole time. So yeah, it was fun.”