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Alon Day, driver of the #45 JSSI Chevrolet, drives during practice for the NASCAR Xfinity Series Mission 200 at The Glen at Watkins Glen International on September 14, 2024 in Watkins Glen, New York. (Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images)<\/p>\nAlon Day is Israel\u2019s first and only representative on the American NASCAR circuit.<\/p>\n
At 33, he is the winningest driver on NASCAR\u2019s European circuit and a four-time Euro Series champion.<\/p>\n
But before he even made it to a racetrack in the U.S. this summer, he faced a much more arduous challenge. In early June, he was slated to fly to the U.S. in preparation for a race in the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) Menards Series, a feeder series into the NASCAR Xfinity and Cup divisions. Instead, he found himself stuck in Israel during \u201cthe 12-Day War.\u201d<\/p>\n
Around three in the morning on June 13, air raid sirens rang throughout Israel as Iran launched retaliatory strikes. They woke up Day and his wife Gil Levin, who is five months pregnant. Reality quickly set in \u2014 it would be a major challenge to get to the U.S. for his next race. His options were limited: crossing into Jordan or taking a cargo ship to Egypt. Even with his French passport (he is a dual citizen), Day said his Israeli identity was too apparent to safely and swiftly move through Egypt and Jordan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a phone call on [June]16th from somebody from the marina saying, \u2018Hey Alon, I\u2019m going to Cyprus in two hours. You want to join?\u201d Day told The Journal. Levin understood the gravity of her husband having to rush to the U.S. for a race. She\u2019s a sports journalist for Israel\u2019s Reshet TV.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how we met; she knows who she married,\u201d Day said. \u201cShe just told me, \u2018don\u2019t think, just go, let me help you pack your stuff and just go.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Levin dropped Day off at the marina.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe said \u2018goodbye\u2019 on the dock, like a Second World War soldier who needs to go to Normandy. It was a really emotional goodbye, going on a boat and knowing it was going to be a long trip.\u201d<\/p>\n
The voyage to Cyprus took 30 hours. From there, Day flew to the U.S., landing with barely any time to prepare. He was already running behind schedule, and he had to take drug and fitness tests and prepare for the June 28 race, with a racing team and pit crew he had never worked with before.<\/p>\n
Alon Day, driver of the #45 JSSI Chevrolet, drives during practice for the NASCAR Xfinity Series Mission 200 at The Glen at Watkins Glen International on September 14, 2024 in Watkins Glen, New York. (Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Day was in such a hurry to catch the ship to Cyprus that didn\u2019t even have the time or space to pack his racing gear \u2014 no helmet with sponsors, and although he was racing for Venturini Motorsports, he had no racing suit. Neil Book, chairman and CEO of Jet Support Services, Inc. (JSSI) sponsored Day and provided him with new gear. His Toyota Camry was in storage in North Carolina, but there was no time to paint new sponsorships on his equipment. Day\u2019s helmet and suit were blank \u2014 he looked more like a SpaceX astronaut than one of the top competitors in auto racing.\u00a0 When he raced in Europe with a Belgian team during his early years, he spent several years working with the same pit crew \u2014 mechanic, engineer and crew chief.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey know me well, I know them well, we build communication in such a good way that we work through everything with every crisis that you throw on us,\u201d Day said. \u201cBut here, I had to meet the people a week before the race. I\u2019m Israeli with an Israeli accent talking to people the most southern accents you can ever imagine. It\u2019s pretty tough sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
It worked out. On June 28 at the Lime Rock Park Speedway in Lakeville, Connecticut (about halfway between New York and Boston), Day and his new team were ready.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have time to really sit down and think about what I went through, and even when I got to the race,\u201d Day said. \u201cThe race was a big success for me coming from such a long trip and dealing with all that s\u2014 \u00a0that I went through.\u201d Day went on to lead for 19 of the 68 laps in the Lime Rock 100 <\/a>and finished in second place.<\/p>\n On July 11, Day would race again, this time at the Sonoma Raceway in Northern California, in the General Tire 200 ARCA Menards Series race. Day finished in third place \u2014 only .156 seconds behind the winner.<\/p>\n Day knows that as a Jew and as an Israeli, his presence in American motorsports is a big deal. He\u2019s found the racing community to be quite supportive, often asking about his military service and his take on what\u2019s happening on the ground in Israel.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m Israeli and I\u2019m Jewish in a very southern sport,\u201d he said. He appreciates it when people ask him questions. Day told The Journal that he feels safer as a Jew in North Carolina than in other parts of the U.S.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m hearing stories from my friends about what\u2019s going on in New York and Chicago. I feel like being Jewish in the U.S. is more dangerous than being in Israel sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n While he tries to be as professional as possible, \u201cyou cannot dodge the bullet of talking politics. People always ask you and you try to serve the country and my religion the best I can, to try to not make mistakes and say what actually is going on and try to speak. It gives a whole different story and color to this whole campaign because I\u2019m not doing it only for myself this time. I\u2019m doing it for a complete nation. And it\u2019s a big thing. I feel like it\u2019s a big thing for the first time that people are not asking me \u2018how was the race,\u2019 but asking me, \u2018Hey, what\u2019s going on over there?\u2019 It\u2019s a bit different, but it also gets me motivated.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYou cannot dodge the bullet of talking politics. People always ask you and you try to serve the country and my religion the best I can, to try to not make mistakes and say what actually is going on and try to speak. It gives a whole different story and color to this whole campaign because I\u2019m not doing it only for myself this time. I\u2019m doing it for a complete nation\u201d \u2013 Alon Day<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This visibility comes with limits. Day said that an Israeli flag or a slogan like \u2018Bring Them Home\u2019 would be rejected by NASCAR\u2019s branding rules, which prohibit controversial or political decals on cars.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t judge [NASCAR] on that, but I tried as much as possible to stay inside the regulations of what I can and what I cannot,\u201d Day said. \u201cOutside off track, I\u2019m trying to be as much as I can, and do as much as possible on track. I still have the Hebrew letters \u201cChai\u201d on the car and I have some place, I think I still have the yellow ribbon, if they didn\u2019t tell me to take it down.\u201d He still races with a yellow ribbon on his shoulder.<\/p>\n Day and Levin live in Kibbutz Kfar Raza, near the Gaza border. He has friends who died in the Oct. 7 attacks. He knows people who have been held hostage by Hamas.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m here in a different role and I know that now I\u2019m not only speaking as Alon Day, but I\u2019m speaking a lot of time for the whole Jewish community and all of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n Born in Ashdod, to engineer Avi and French mother Maggi (hence, the French passport), Day grew up with three older brothers. That meant there was a lot of rock music in the house \u2014 Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine and Tool. It\u2019s an influence he feels every race day \u2014 he gets focused and amped up by listening to metal band Disturbed, fronted by Jewish singer David Draiman. This fall, he will become a father. But until then, Day will compete again August 30<\/a> at the Portland International Raceway, driving the No. 24 Toyota for Sam Hunt Racing. It will be his first Xfinity start of 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alon Day is Israel\u2019s first and only representative on the American NASCAR circuit. At 33, he is the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":122934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-122933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n