By the Numbers: Bristol

You'll have to forgive Kelly Bires if he's a little excited right now; he wasn't supposed to be in this position -- at least not this soon. Bires comes into Saturday's running of the Sharpie Mini 300 (2 p.m. ET, ESPN2) at Bristol Motor Speedway sitting 10th in the point standings, just 160 points behind leader Kevin Harvick.

The road to get to this point was one of opportunity and a little bit of luck.

The 23-year-old native of Mauston, Wis., started his NASCAR career with Wood Bros./JTG Racing in the Truck Series in 2006. He ran one race that year -- a 19th-place finish in the fall Atlanta race.

The next season, Bires ran seven races in multiple trucks for the Wood Bros., planning on spending at least a year or two in the Truck Series to hone is skills. The season didn't start out well, though, with Bires posting four DNFs in that seven-race stretch with his best finish, 10th, coming at Atlanta.

Despite the struggles, Bires was expedited to the then Busch Series to drive the No. 47 Ford midway through the '07 season when driver Jon Wood came down with some medical issues.

Immediately, Bires made an impression.

For the season, Bires posted two top-10 runs (Kentucky, Lowe's), eight top-20s and only two DNFs. His average finish of 22.7 moved the No. 47 car up to 27th in owner points at the end of the season with Bires finishing the season 32nd in the driver standings with only 19 starts.

Four races into the 2008 season, Bires is on another level. Running for JTG Racing after the Wood Brothers and the Geschickter's split their organization before the season, Bires has proven he is one of the Nationwide Series regulars the Cup stars are going to have to contend with.

"I think that everything has really been coming together for the team this year," Bires said. "We're competitive -- we've been bringing top-10 cars to the track every week and we easily could have had four top-10 finishes. Since we don't, that's what we're continuing to shoot for. It's going to be a lot of fun Saturday."

Bires has one Nationwide start at the .533-mile Bristol track, a 29th-place finish where the team struggled with the setup all night. Bires said he's been champing at the bit for a rematch with the "world's fastest half-mile."

"I've been waiting to get back to Bristol since I left the parking lot last August," he said. "It took us the whole race just to figure out what we needed to run well and be competitive. And you have to worry about survival on top of how the car is running.

"But lately the cars have been so good, that we should be able to outrun the trouble spots out there. The car we're bringing is great, it handles well and I really like it."

Saying goodbye

Two years ago, ironically at the Bristol spring race, Dale Jarrett announced he would retire from NASCAR after the 2008 season. A lot has changed for Jarrett in that two-year span -- a move from Robert Yates Racing to Michael Waltrip Racing, switching from Ford to Toyota -- but the fact remains Jarrett will go down as one of the best drivers this sport has seen, and more importantly, one of the classiest.

Jarrett never won a Nationwide Series championship, but in his first seven full-time seasons in the series, he never finished worse than sixth in the points standings.

Jarrett has only seven Nationwide starts since 1999, but that doesn't mean his absence won't be noticed. Here's a look at his career stats:

Just the facts ma'am