Corey Heim was tagged as a DraftKings NASCAR DFS salary saver for the Anduril 250 after qualifying 13th at Naval Base Coronado, a brand new circuit that no driver had raced before Saturday. That makes his spot on the grid more than a footnote. In DFS, it is the kind of starting position that can matter as much as reputation.
The interest in Heim is obvious today because the race is being built around uncertainty. A new road course levels the field, and a driver who starts 13th can open room in lineups without carrying the price of the top names. Shane van Gisbergen, who has won six of the last seven road and street course races, took the pole and was priced at $13,000, while Austin Hill and Ryan Preece were also part of the conversation as the weekend unfolded.
Heim’s case rests on results, not hype. Since the start of 2023, he has won road and street course races at Watkins Glen, the Charlotte ROVAL, Lime Rock Park and Mid-Ohio, and he has also won one of two starts at COTA. That kind of record is why he shows up as relief in DraftKings lineups: he offers a path to points at a lower salary than the headliners, and his 13th-place start gives him room to work forward if the race breaks cleanly.
Still, this is not the same as doing it in the Craftsman Truck Series. Heim has been strong there, but the Anduril 250 brings a step up in competition, and that is the part DFS players have to weigh. His road-course résumé is real, but this weekend asks whether it travels when the field gets deeper and the margin for error gets thinner.
The rest of the board makes that decision more delicate. Preece started seventh after posting an average finishing position of 14.75 in the road races mentioned, with two top-10s and a 75% success rate. Hill, meanwhile, was fast in Friday Cup Series practice, qualified tenth on Saturday and then won the O'Reilly Series race later in the evening. Heim does not need to be the safest play to matter; he only needs to be the kind of salary saver that lets a lineup fit the drivers with winning upside.
That is why the focus lands back on Heim as the weekend begins. If he turns a 13th-place start into another clean road-course run, he becomes one of the better value pieces on the board. If the jump in competition slows him down, DFS players will know quickly. Either way, the Anduril 250 begins with Heim exactly where the market wanted him: in range, affordable, and in the middle of a race no one has seen before.
