Kelley Earnhardt reflects back, looks ahead

She is the less famous of the Earnhardts involved in running JR Motorsports.

But as co-owner and general manager Kelley Earnhardt is, in fact, much more involved in the day-to-day operations of the organization that fields a pair of full-time Nationwide Series teams than her more famous brother, Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Kelley Earnhardt spoke candidly with a small group of media, including NASCAR.COM, about a number of subjects last week following the announcement that the Nationwide car Dale Jr. recently drove to victory at Daytona is now on display at the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Question: Talk a little bit about Dale Jr. winning at Daytona -- and what it meant to you for him to do it in the No. 3 blue-and-yellow Wrangler car that was a replica of the one your father used to drive?

Earnhardt: There was a flurry of activity for us for several months on the business side and on the competition side to even make it happen that he was in that car. So to have this car in Victory Lane in Daytona -- and I think you saw this in our emotions [after the race] -- was really just unbelievable. That's exactly what we wanted, but the competition is so tough out there. It definitely was within our reach, but to go out there and actually do it was incredible.

Q: Dale Jr. sure was careful about wanting to preserve the car, to the point of not even wanting to do a burnout with it after the victory. Why was that?

Earnhardt: The big thing about that was the engine. [Hendrick Motorsports] really worked hard to find us some more power for these cars. I think on the Nationwide side, that's one thing these Chevys have been lacking to compete against the Toyotas. So Dale was wanting to keep it in the same working condition that it was. He didn't want to do anything that would maybe knock it out, so that maybe they could take a look at it [back at the JR Motorsports shop].

Q: So now the car is in the NASCAR Hall of Fame, at least until Sept. 19, when you said you will remove the body from it for display at JR Motorsports and take the chassis to run it in future races. Is having it in the Hall icing on the cake?

Earnhardt: This is definitely icing on the cake. To win and for it to be here and on display, and for it to eventually be on display at JR Motorsports, we couldn't ask for anything else. It wasn't terribly hard to put together, but there were a lot of working parts and a lot of different people involved. When you go through trying to get this person or that person on board, and Person A doesn't like this but Person B does, you've got to compromise. And we did it fast. We got this all together in four or five months.

We didn't want it just to be a car on the race track. We wanted it to provide our sport with something that we could walk away from and have everyone who was involved with it be proud. ... You don't get this kind of timing to come along too often.

• No. 3 Daytona winner on display at Hall of Fame (Continued)