CUP: JJ Yeley Sponsored By Pro-Israel Group

Sprint Cup

CUP: JJ Yeley Sponsored By Pro-Israel Group

Duo wants to promote Israel support through NASCAR Sprint Cup sponsorship of JJ Yeley...

Bob Pockrass | http://www.scenedaily.com | Posted February 13, 2012 Charlotte, NC

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series car of JJ Yeley will promote United States-Israel relations. (Photo: American Israel Racing.com)

Rich Shirey and Mark MacCaull aren’t political activists. But they have a belief in a cause, and they’re willing to put some of their money behind it in one of the more unique places – the hood of a Sprint Cup car.

Shirey and MacCaull started American Israel Racing to generate support for Israel. It will advertise its website on the hood of the Robinson-Blakeney Racing car of driver JJ Yeley for the first three Cup races this year with hopes of continuing it throughout the season through people donating to the cause.

“I’m just a regular guy, a country guy and NASCAR has a lot of average people just like me,” Shirey said. “We need to show the world, show Israel, that regardless of the way it might look at times, the people in this country have the belief of appreciating them being an ally and a democracy similar to ours.

“I’m not a movie star. I’m not a country music singer. I didn’t have the avenue. I went to Mark and said NASCAR would be a fantastic to try to build this [cause].”

MacCaull was an engineer at Haas CNC Racing and Michael Waltrip Racing.

“Rich and I were good friends and Rich had the idea of how America needs to support Israel,” MacCaull said. “We were just talking about it one day and decided the Daytona 500 would be a great place to promote this and my background was in NASCAR racing.

“We started from there and put it together and realized it was a good stage and the more we talked, the more we realized we should do the entire season.”

Both MacCaull and Shirey live in the Charlotte area and share a common belief. MacCaull had known the team’s crew chief, Tony Furr, and they were able to arrange the sponsorship with the team owned by Jay Robinson.

“Being raised Southern Baptist and the belief that we should back Israel if we believe what the Bible says and the other side of it – it’s not a political thing that motivates me – we have a country that is our closest ally in a part of the world that is not very friendly, especially to the west,” Shirey said.

“I just wanted the world to know [about this]. … We just want this to succeed. We’ll do whatever it takes to the best of our ability to do so.”

Neither Shirey nor MacCaull would consider themselves activists and haven’t been involved in political movements. They stressed they wanted it to be a positive-oriented campaign.

“We’re as far from activists as you can get,” MacCaull said. “We want to avoid the radicals.”

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