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

Q: You haven't named a driver for your No. 88 Chevrolet entry in the Nationwide Series for next year yet. Is it difficult lining that up when you're not yet sure what the rules for that series will be next year in regards to Cup drivers, etc.?

Earnhardt: From an economic standpoint, it takes a personality to sell a sponsor -- and performance, and being up front, and being someone you can market, someone the consumers are going to recognize and want to be a part of what they're doing. We're lucky in the fact that when people come along like Brad [Keselowski] and Martin Truex [Jr.] and people that Dale takes under his wing that are kind of under an umbrella that he's standing under, get that extra attention a lot of times. That's good for us and for our company. So we have a better sale of a younger driver than most teams do.

Thirteen drivers have combined to drive JR Motorsports' two Nationwide cars this season.

JR Motorsports

2010 Drivers

Driver	7	88
Steve Arpin	5	1
Kelly Bires	0	5
Landon Cassill	3	0
Dale Jr.	0	1
Ron Fellows	0	1
J.R. Fitzpatrick	1	0
Jamie McMurray	0	7
Danica Patrick	5	0
Coleman Pressley	0	2
Greg Sacks	0	1
Elliott Sadler	0	1
Scott Wimmer	2	0
Josh Wise	3	0

I don't think teams will be able to just take a kid right off the street and sell him on sponsorship at this level. We've got to do a lot of other things from the standpoint of controlling our costs. You can't sell $6 million or $7 million worth of sponsorship on Brad Coleman and these guys. They've got talent, no doubt about it; but until they get on the race track and prove it and get some dollars behind them, you know, it all just works in a big circle.

Q: You've said Aric Almirola could be "in the mix" to drive the No. 88 Nationwide car next year. What about current JR Motorsports part-time drivers Steve Arpin and Josh Wise?

Earnhardt: With Steve and Josh, we're lucky this year -- not in the fact that we don't have sponsors, but lucky in the fact that because we didn't we can use that on the 7 car to develop young drivers [when Danica Patrick isn't driving it in the races sponsored by GoDaddy.com]. We were going to run that car all year long and we don't have to go to a sponsor and say, 'Hey, do you want to take a chance on Steve Arpin? Do you want to take a chance on Josh Wise?' JR Motorsports is taking that chance. Had we had a sponsor for the full year, they might not have wanted to do that.

You can ask [crew chiefs] Tony [Eury] Jr. and Tony [Eury] Sr. for their opinions, because they're with them week in and week out. But they're still getting in the car every weekend, so that's a positive from my standpoint. They're both great kids. Steve is great with sponsors, he's marketable, he's got a great personality -- and Josh is the same way. It's just that nobody knows them.

And Steve actually, from his dirt late model and all that, he's actually got all these sponsors that are talking with him and whatnot. So there's some action there and things going on.

• Almirola to drive No. 88 at ORP

Q: Where do you see the Nationwide Series going with all the changes that are being discussed, such as possibly limiting Cup drivers' involvement in it?

Earnhardt: It's going to be like this -- timing and all the parties willing to give in to something. Because it's going to take that to come up with a good solution. The owners are going to have to give; NASCAR is going to have to give; everybody is going to have to give for us to come up with a solution that will work.

It's not going to do us any good to throw the Cup drivers out. That's not going to fix it. It's going to have to be a multitude of things.

Q: You've repeatedly said JR Motorsports has no imminent plans to move into Cup racing. Why not?

Earnhardt: It's a $7 million to $25 million decision. I don't know. There are a lot of zeroes in there. If it was a $7 million to a $12-13 million decision, it might be different. But we definitely don't want to be a start-and-park team in the Cup Series, or be half-sponsored. None of that.

We're proud of our brand at JR Motorsports, and Dale. Just like [with the one-time running of the No. 3 car], we don't want to put ourselves out there for anything but first place.