If you think Kyle Larson is good, wait until Corey Day gets here.
Maybe that’s an unrealistic expectation, but the 18-year-old Sprint Car prodigy will make his Truck Series debut on Thursday night at Bristol Motor Speedway and there is a great deal of hype associated with his arrival.
Like Larson, Day is a Sprint Car and Midget ace who has already started winning at a high percentage rate and is currently third in the High Limit Racing national championship and third in the Midweek Money sub-series driving for two-time World of Outlaws champion Jason Myers.
In addition to marquee Sprint Car wins at Knoxville and in the Gold Cup Race of Champions, he also podiumed in the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals and Knoxville Nationals earlier this season. That has garnered the attention of Hendrick Motorsports, that has him signed to a development contract, which has seen him competed in both ARCA and Late Model Stocks.
He won a race at Hickory in Late Models, albeit in a twin feature format, in which the second race was inverted.
But Day is being fast tracked to the Truck Series, where he will make four starts this year for Bill McAnally at Bristol, Kansas, Homestead and Martinsville.
“I am really blessed right now to have Jason Meyers as a car owner in Sprint Cars and he’s like my uncle,” Day told Sportsnaut. “I have known him my entire life and I have full trust in them to steer me in the right direction.
“I also think Hendrick Motorsports is the best place to be to go NASCAR racing and I’m just really blessed to be in this position.”
So, there is a lot of hype, and Day is being thrown right into the mix at the highest levels but there are also past precedents that indicate this might be an taller hill to climb even for a generational talent like Day is believed to be.
David Gravel had the support of Axalta and Jeff Gordon and was poised to make a run at NASCAR following their Knoxville Nationals win together at Jason Johnson Racing in 2019 but COVID-19 nixed those opportunities.
And for every Larson and Bell, who successfully made the lead from open wheel dirt racing, the equally talented and possible future Sprint Car champions Gio Scelzi and Buddy Kofoid did not take to pavement and ultimately chose to remain in that discipline.
It’s also working out well for both, as they seem poised to lead the next generation of Sprint Car racers once this Donny Schatz and Brad Sweet era transitions to what comes next.
But again, as Larson put it, there is no reason for Day not to share his same potential.
“He’s basically me,” Larson said. “He’s better than I am, or I was obviously at that age. He is in a lot better rides than I was at that age. His race craft, his maturity on the track, off the track, like all that, he’s really, really good. He can run harder than anybody on the race track and be in control. So, he’s definitely the next kid coming up that probably will make it.”
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You would think that Larson and Day would have talked a lot about this career shift but Day says they haven’t and offered an answer that shows a lot about his competitive nature.
“Man, I haven’t much, you know because we are still competitors in this,” Day said of their shared Sprint Car starts. “I don’t think he wants to give me all his secrets but I do study him a lot. I don’t know if he knows but I study him immensely because you know, he’s the best.”
Day says he respects the Sprint Car industry tremendously and doesn’t view this process as choosing between NASCAR or dirt but says he has always dreamt of racing at the highest level of Sprint Car racing since he was a kid.
He’s a fan and it’s something he wants to do and that journey begins on Thursday night.
In the meanwhile, he is still fifth in the High Limit championship, which is important because his car is sixth in the owners championship with the top-5 entries earning a charter at the end of the year in the debut season.
He’s also third in the Midweek Money with a chance to win that title outright, and then comes whatever comes next year, based on how these four NASCAR Truck Series races go.
“I hate that we broke that spindle (at Kokomo) because we were leading Midweek Money and that kind of took me out of it,” Day said. “But we are points racing for that charter. I’m not paying too much attention to it because I tend to think we will take care it if I perform well but it is something I want to accomplish.”