Race to support Israel at today’s Daytona 500

Israel and NASCAR: They go together like . . . well, like gefilte fish and bicycles.
Or so you thought. Starting Thursday, the connection between the unlikely pair will grow a little stronger with the debut of America Israel Racing, a NASCAR team attempting to qualify for Sunday’s Daytona 500.

Backed by a pair of Zionist Christians from North Carolina, the car — bearing US and Israeli flags — will seek one of 49 spots in Sunday’s climactic race. Its participation in Thursday’s preliminaries, known as the Gatorade Duels, marks the first of what its owners hope will be a long series of appearances highlighting the friendship between the two countries.

“We want to educate people because a lot of young people don’t understand why it’s so important for us to be allies,” says Rich Shirey, one of the team’s co-founders. “The reason we’re doing this with NASCAR is because it’s so publicized in the US — it’s on [TV] every Sunday, and if we can keep that car in there, it’s a good avenue to get some media attention.”

Media attention, in fact, isn’t just AIR’s goal — it’s also what inspired the squad’s creation in the first place. Shirey says a key motivation has been correcting the perception that ties between the two countries have frayed in recent years, a view he believes has been inaccurately propagated by America’s major media outlets.

“The media a lot of the time changes things to reflect their opinion,” says Shirey, 49, who owns a landscaping business and blueberry farm in Charlotte. “It’s not really Americans’ opinion . . . Israel has been our closest ally, and there needs to be a voice out there that shows that people support it.”

Should the AIR car qualify for the Daytona 500, Sunday’s race will indeed prove a powerful venue for that message. In addition to the 168,000 fans who watch the race in person, another 15.6 million Americans viewed it on TV last year.

If NASCAR seems less than an obvious venue for pro-Israel activism, Shirey, a Southern Baptist, is in some ways an unlikely advocate. Although he grew up in a family of Zionists — his grandparents took him to Israel when he was 11 — he doesn’t consider himself “a real religious person,” and says he’s never been involved in politics of any kind. He doesn’t view his pro-Israel race car as making a statement — “it’s not political to me,” he says.

Nevertheless, the team is being careful about conforming to NASCAR policy, which prohibits political messages and slogans. The squad currently distributes information only about itself, though Shirey says it’s preparing educational materials to share with supporters in the future.

In the near term, he expresses optimism about Thursday’s qualifying race. He acknowledges that the team’s souped-up Toyota Camry is “not the best car out there,” but calls driver J.J. Yeley — at one time the youngest person ever to race at the Indianapolis 500 — “phenomenal.”

Beyond Daytona, Shirey and his team hope the car will compete throughout NASCAR’s nine-month season, an undertaking he estimates will cost $10 million.

He and other team backers have funded the car so far, but “we’ll need corporate sponsors and other people to make this happen,” he says. Several potential sponsors have expressed interest, he says,and the team has also managed to attract small individual donations via its website.