(photo credit Leon Hammack)

As he stepped off the ATV in the pits at Merced Speedway on Saturday afternoon, Corey Day seemed none the worse for wear.

A week earlier, at fast, slick Placerville Speedway in Northern California, Day had suffered a series of violent flips while running second in his midget race car midway through the Hangtown 100.

Shaken up in the accident, Day skipped the Merced race the following Friday—in part because of soggy track conditions from several days of rain—but he was back in action for the Chase Johnson Classic on Saturday.

Once a committed dirt racer, the 19-year-old from Clovis, Calif., can pick and choose his events on the clay surfaces after signing a contract to drive Hendrick Motorsports’ No. 17 Chevrolet full-time in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series next year.

“To be honest with you, at this stage of my dirt career, I’m more of a fair-weather racer,” said Day, who drove both a winged sprint car and a midget at Merced on Saturday night. “I’m not really that interested in running the rough and cooked-up stuff, especially without a wing over my head.”

In fact, as the end of the NASCAR offseason approaches, Day will turn his full attention to the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. He is Hendrick’s first full-time driver in that division since Kyle Busch won five races in the No. 5 Chevrolet in 2004.

Day and reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Larson are cut from the same cloth. In fact, Larson has referred to his fellow Californian as “the next me.”

Day may be an even quicker study on pavement. In his first NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series race of the 2025 season, he won the pole at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in March. In nine starts in the series he posted two top fives and three top 10s, with a best result of second at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.

In 11 starts in the Xfinity (now O’Reilly Auto Parts) Series, he scored a fourth at Las Vegas in October, but his epiphany in the division came a month earlier at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway, where he started 16th and finished ninth.

“You’ve got to get seat time,” said Day, who finished on the lead lap in 10 of his 11 starts, completing 2,162 of 2,163 possible circuits. “That’s like the biggest thing. You can ‘sim’ your life away and study video and data and all the stuff as much as you can, but until you go get the real-world experience and feel it, it’s hard to progress.

“Gateway was kind of the perfect potion, I guess, for the right amount of seat time, and I had a really good car. I think the track was a lot of fun, and, yeah, I was able to move around and feel the car out good and just had a good run.

“And then I’d say Nashville for the truck (a fifth-place finish). That was a big one, too. I just finally got to that point with seat time and figured out what I was doing finally.”

With partial seasons in both series under his belt, Day isn’t one to temper his expectations. He’s a driver who is used to success.

“If I tell myself I just want to be consistent all season, I’ll be shooting myself in the foot,” Day said. “I want to go win. I want to go be the best and win a championship.

“Those are shooting-for-the-stars goals, I guess you could say, but I think you’ve got to have that mind-set that you can do it. I’m going to work as hard as I can to hopefully be in the hunt for a championship at the end of the year and win some races.

“I love driving race cars, of course. That’s why I do it. But I love winning just as much.”

It didn’t take Day long to satisfy his appetite for victory. He won Saturday’s sprint car race at Merced and finished third in the USAC national midget feature that followed.

TIL NEXT TIME, I AM STILL WORKING ON MY REDNECK!