When Hendrick Motorsports first looked into Corey Day, he couldn’t drive a manual transmission; Jeff Gordon taught him
Corey Day is currently in his first season of full-time NASCAR competition after running just a select few O’Reilly races in 2025 and Truck races the year before. The 20-year-old comes from a dirt track racing background.
Day was vouched for by Kyle Larson. The two had some epic battles on the dirt track leading up the signing with the famed NASCAR team.
Dirt Sprint Cars are direct drive machines. They are in drive or they aren’t. There’s no transmission.
At the time, Corey Day had never driven a manual transmission. His first lesson on that was with four-time champion, Jeff Gordon…
Corey Day gets a lesson from Jeff Gordon
“All of the sudden, we start seeing this kid Corey Day who is you know, racing wheel to wheel with Larson, beating him at times,” Jeff Gordon stated via the Business of Motorsports podcast.
“I remember going to Kyle, I said, ‘Is this kid for real?’ He says, ‘Aw man, he’s really good.’ “
“That really just led to, ‘Hey Mr. Hendrick, we see a lot in this kid.’ We’re like, he doesn’t have the traditional kind of path. And, should we be thinking about this nontraditional?”
“Larson got involved which was fun too. He’s like, ‘Just put him straight in an O’Reilly car. Don’t do all that other stuff.’ We’re like, ‘Huh? What?’ That’s not been the way that we’ve done it.”
“He’d never driven a manual transmission car ever until we went to Ron Fellows’ Driving School. The first day I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ “
“I had to leave. Day one, it was me and him on the track. Then, Larson came in for Day two.”
“I left and I called Larson the next day after they were done, ‘How’d it go?’ He goes, ‘Oh man, he’s fast.’ I was like, ‘Really? Because I mean he could barely shift.’ “
“He’s like, ‘I don’t know what he learned overnight. But, I was doing everything I could to keep up with him. He was all over my bumper.”
“That was one of those things where we realize, when you’re driving 900 horsepower+ sprint car on dirt you’re capable of kind of maybe skipping a few steps.”
Watch the video below.
Jeff Gordon speaks on signing Corey Day
Corey Day signs with Hendrick Motorsports
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