Corey Day has been linked to Hendrick Motorsports since September 2023.
That was the point where Jeff Gordon, now the vice chairman of the organization, sent Ronnie Day a text message asking if his son, then 17, would be interested in pursuing a NASCAR career.
The elder Day, humorously, didn’t take the request seriously asking ‘Jeff Gordon’ to send a selfie proving it was actually the four-time Cup Series champion.
“My dad showed me the text and was like, ‘do you think this is real,’ and then asked Jeff to send him a picture to make sure he was the real Jeff Gordon,” the younger Day recalled during an ARCA Racing Series media session at Daytona.
“He did send a photo,” Day confirmed. “I’ll have to go get on my dad’s phone and screen shot the conversation. It was hilarious and we were laughing once we had the realization, ‘oh crap, this is Jeff Gordon and this is real.’ So yeah, that was cool.”
(The Days have been asked for the photo and they’re going to try to look for it and send it over)
Day had met Gordon before, first crossing paths in June 2021 when the NASCAR legend had a track day in a Midget at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Dirt Track. The deal was overseen by Clauson Marshall Racing, who Day drove for, and Day met both Gordon and Hendrick president Jeff Andrews.
They met again in January 2022 when Gordon served as grand marshal for the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals.
But after that text exchange, the Days met with Hendrick leadership in 2023 just to make sure it was a fix. Day says he remembers very vividly a bike ride a took on a trail near his home in Clovis, California to process the opportunity that had been presented before him.
Day said he didn’t get starstruck until weeks later once he dawned on him what this meant.
“I had to race the next week so I really didn’t get like a lot of time to sit back and reflect on it, whereas then I had a couple of weeks off and was just sitting at home after the (World of Outlaws) California swing so racing had started to slow down,” Day said. “That gave me a moment to think about all the big things that had happened in my career.
“That one was very unexpected. I just had to ride my bike down the trail and thought about how cool it was actually happening.”
This all came at the initial recommendation of Kyle Larson, who basically used to be Day before he was discovered in NASCAR circles by Toyota Racing Development. Larson was a California Midget and Sprint Car prodigy who was quickly placed in the NASCAR ladder system and eventually landed at Chip Ganassi Racing prior to his Hendrick stint.
Day is the 2022 Chili Bowl rookie of the year, 2023 NARC 410 champion, 2023 Gold Cup Race of Champions winner and 2024 Turkey Night Grand Prix winner.
Larson made the recommendation and Gordon follows Sprint Car racing enough still, as a former dirt Midget and Sprint ace as well, that he quickly bought into what the 2021 champion was trying to sell him.
Now Day will embark on a 30-race development run across NASCAR Xfinity, Trucks, ARCA and Trans-Am while also still racing in some of the biggest Sprint and Midget races in the country. It’s yet another comparison he will now share with Larson.
“It’s an honor to be compared to Kyle Larson,” Day said. “He is, in my opinion, and I’m sure a lot of other people’s, the best race car driver in the world. So to be compared to him and talked about in the same sentence is really cool.
“It doesn’t add too much more pressure on me. I feel like if I added more than I couldn’t do the job I was hired to do. So I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing and if I do that, then I’ll keep getting compared to him.”
Day says he is most looking forward to the Xfinity Series car since it is ‘basically like an old Cup car’ and the power to weight ratio, he believes, will most feel familiar to his dirt tendencies as a driver. The ARCA and Truck platforms, which he has since raced last year, are low power and high grip, momentum racing.
He also looks forward to running the road races.
“I’m curious to see the competition level at each series I’m racing in,” Day said. “I’m used to racing with the best Sprint Car drivers in the world so I’m curious what the best Trans-Am racers in the world are like and the best Xfinity Series racers in the world are like.
“I’m super excited for that. I am probably going to get beat pretty bad in my first couple but I’m excited to get a feel for the competition level and think it will only make better as a race car driver. When I get beat, it makes me bring myself up higher to their level.”