Alon Day took a long, circuitous route to the big time. He started at 10, borrowing go-karts to race on a track in his hometown, Ashdod, a port city about 25 miles south of Tel Aviv. For his bar mitzvah, his parents bought him a deluxe go-kart. But Day could not move on to higher-caliber racing without leaving home.

At 14, he began competing in Europe, aiming to become a Formula One driver. He drove briefly in China, winning the Asian Formula Renault Challenge at 17, then did three years of mandatory service in the Israeli military.

Day drove in North America for the first time in 2015, competing in the first six races of the Indy Lights season, the feeder series for Indy cars. His best finish was a sixth place, and he then migrated back to Europe for endurance sports-car racing. But he lost his sponsor, which meant he would also lose his ride for 2015.

“I was thinking about taking a year off until I found a new sponsor,” Day said.

But another option soon appeared. Nascar had taken over a stock car racing series in Europe in 2012 and was looking for talented young drivers there. Someone from Nascar reached out to Day, who tested his first stock car at a track in Italy and found that it suited him.

“People in Europe don’t really know a lot about Nascar,” he said, adding with a laugh, “I just thought it was a bunch of people turning left.”

The Nascar Whelen Euro Series includes races at six road courses and at just one oval, a half-mile track, Raceway Venray in the Netherlands, so Day got limited experience on the top series’ most common configuration. But Day enjoyed the simpler challenge of driving a stock car. In a high-tech sports car, he said, “the steering wheel looks like a Nintendo game.”

In 2016, he was asked to drive in two oval races in the Xfinity Series, Nascar’s second tier, and in two races in its truck series. In his first Xfinity Series race, at Mid-Ohio Sports-Car Course, he started 22nd in a 40-car field and finished 13th. Any top-25 finish, he said, would have seemed like a moral victory.