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November 15, 2014
HOMESTEAD, FLORIDA
KERRY THARP: We're going to hear from our winning championship team owners, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kelley Earnhardt Miller. JR Motorsports wins the 2014 NASCAR Nationwide Series championship. Kelley, I'm going to start with you. I know this has been a labor of love and a lot of hard work and effort, and now you are champions in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, I know a series that is very, very near and dear to your hearts, a sponsor that is very near and dear to your hearts. Maybe just talk about the significance and how this feels for you both professionally and personally.
KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: Well, it feels really good. You know, we started this in 2006, and so it is a labor of love. This year having NAPA on board, really 12 months ago not really having anything together for Chase or this team, it's kind of surreal to be here and be champions with an 18‑year‑old driver and a sponsor that has been in Dale and I's court before in our past. It's very exciting.
KERRY THARP: Dale, just talk about this. You're a two‑time NASCAR Nationwide Series championship driver, and now you are a NASCAR Nationwide Series championship owner. I know that's got to feel pretty cool.
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Yeah, it's very satisfying to have been a part of JR Motorsports for all these years and to have came up through the three stocks and late models and pro Cup Series and anything else we've ever done. We bought our first car and raced it out of the shop in my backyard, and our first race was here at Homestead at the end of the year. I think it was '05 maybe, '06, several years ago. But we were just trying to go racing, just be in the series, and we had a great partner with Navy to get started. We went through a lot of growing pains, won some races, worked with a lot of great people, and, you know, this championship just really has me reflecting back on all that and all the people that have come through that shop and the people that we have now, the relationships that we've built, partners we've had. It's just been a‑‑ it's only been ten years, it seems like it's been 100. It's been a wonderful, wonderful trip.
I'm glad, look forward to next year, and definitely going to enjoy what we've been able to accomplish this year.
KERRY THARP: Rick Hendrick has joined us, as well. Congratulations on being a part of this championship. Maybe just talk about the significance of JR Motorsports winning the NASCAR Nationwide Series championship and a young champion like Chase Elliott, what that means to you all.
RICK HENDRICK: You know, Dale and I talked about it‑‑ and Kelley, they do all the work‑‑ how we could use the company to grow young people, and Dale has always liked to give young drivers a chance, and I've always admired him for that. You know, I've known these two since they were kids, and we've raced together, we've been together, and to see them get the championship really is rewarding to me inside. To see Chase‑‑ I said I wasn't going to do any more driver development, and then signed him when he was like 15, and boy, he's been unbelievable.
Again, Kelley and Dale have worked so hard to build that company, and the success it's had this year with all the wins, and developing people, like Greg Ives giving him a shot and now coming on in the Cup Series to be Dale's crew chief, it's paying tremendous dividends to our company. But I'm really, really proud of these guys for all of that effort and putting all of the time, money, and effort into building the company.
This is kind of an unbelievable thing to sit here tonight with Chase winning the championship, but we had‑‑ if somebody told me that a year ago when we didn't have a sponsor and didn't know what we were going to do and how many we could run out of our pocket, you look back, and it's pretty special.
Q. Dale, is there extra significance for you that this is Nationwide's last year as a series sponsor and they're going to be a team sponsor in the future?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Absolutely. I've had such a wonderful time working with them as a personal service for several years, and it's a very genuine relationship, and I'm excited to continue to work with them, and I'm glad that they are ready to grow their involvement on that side of it and get on the side of our car. What they've done with this series‑‑ I mean, they came in, and when they're leaving, they're leaving this year, and the series is in a whole lot better place than it was when they started. They've done a wonderful job being a part of our sport and representing our sport. They really love this series, and this series fits them very well.
So I'm excited that they're going to continue to be involved in the sport. Fortunately enough it's with us, and we're able to grow our relationship we already have with them. That just couldn't be better. I couldn't have wrote a better script for that.
Very happy to have been in the series. We enjoy this series. We have a home in this series. It works for what we want to accomplish, and it fits in how we want to run our business, so we're glad to be a part of it. Look forward to working with XFINITY and continuing our involvement and helping them enjoy their new foray into NASCAR.
Q. Kelley, were you there last week in Phoenix?
KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: No, I wasn't.
Q. Can you say where you were?
KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: Watching on my television.
Q. Were you screaming?
KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: I was screaming, yeah. It's hunting season, you know, so I was home with the kids while my hubby was out hunting. You know hunting is real important to this Earnhardt family.
Q. Dale, you talked about when you guys started the team, what did you envision at that point? Were you looking at it when you guys first started as a "we build this thing and we can groom talent" and stuff like that, or was it just something you guys wanted to do?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Navy was looking for a new beginning, and they had been in the Nationwide Series for a couple years, I believe. They were looking for something fresh, and at the time Steve Crisp was working with myself and Kelley and we were a very small company. Kelley could probably tell you how many employees we had on two hands. We got to talking with Navy, and they said, if you guys want to get into racing as owners, we'd love to be a part of it. The financing was there, and I was really looking forward to doing that. We'd been in the Pro Cup Series for several years and had good success there.
We bought a car from RCR, I believe‑‑ no, we bought a DEI car that Menard had drove. I think it was the car that Menard raced in in the Nationwide Series for DEI, and we brought it here with Mark McFarland as the driver and Wes Ward was the crew chief. We had a used pit box that me and Wes barely fit on together. We just wanted to race. We didn't have‑‑ at the time, and I knew it, we didn't have the resources to compete with the guys up front, but we were just trying to get out there and be a part of it, and we just wanted to compete.
I can't take a lot of credit for how well we've done since. I know we've got a lot of people that have come into our company and influenced that. Kelley has steered the ship, and people like Greg Ives and the Ureys and all these people that have been through the company have helped us climb another rung on the ladder one year at a time to where we are.
Q. For Dale and Kelley, can you say the name of your team?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.:  JR Motorsports.
KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: How many times do we have to go through that?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: It's JR Motorsports. I keep screwing it up.
Q. Can you talk about how you're organized in a sense? Kelley, do you pretty much run things, and do you do stuff without telling Dale or do you have to tell him pretty much everything you're doing?
KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: Well, that's a good question. How we're organized, you know, I run the day‑to‑day with a staff of 120 people. Joe Mattes, VP of Marketing and Licensing is really my right hand. I'm there Monday through Friday, five days a week, eight hours a day, and I was thinking about that earlier when Dale was going through and Mr.Hendrick was giving Dale and I credit. We really, all of us, have our own talents that we bring to this organization as owners. And Dale, he is out there on the front line for us with all of our sponsors and leveraging relationships so that we can make this work, and we're behind the scenes juggling and marketing and figuring out how we can do it from that standpoint. And without Mr.Hendrick ‑‑ and when we merged with him in 2008, Dale was right, we didn't have the resources to do this. We were several million in the hole at that point.
Mr.Hendrick will tell you he was in the hole at that point, too. Somehow when we came together, we all cleared the hole somehow, but‑‑
RICK HENDRICK: I cut my losses.
KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: It's been good since then. Chance entered the house. But I do do a lot of things that Dale isn't on board with‑‑ not on board that he doesn't agree, but I don't have to tell him everything, and that's nice, and Mr.Hendrick doesn't make me tell him everything, either. I call Mr.H a lot, I call his staff a lot. Doug Dukehart and I talk a lot, Ryan Pemberton. It's really a team effort, but on a day‑to‑day basis I'm right there handling things. We've got big decisions to make, the three of us are making those by text and email and figuring it out.
Q. Rick, does tonight kind of take away some of the sting of what I assume is not going to be a very fun day for you tomorrow?
RICK HENDRICK: I guess, yeah. Yeah, tomorrow is pretty painful. I can't remember coming down here when we weren't in it somehow. But hey, it's racing, and we've had a good year. We've got 13 wins, and engine shop has won 19, I think, Cup races, 18. You know, this championship with Chase, and to see‑‑ again, JR Motorsports, we had this idea of getting this together, and standing up there tonight crowning the champion, it's pretty special.
You know, if Jeff Gordon finishes in front of those guys tomorrow, I'll be a little disappointed more probably. But I hate it for Dale. I think somehow if we had‑‑ I don't want to say a mulligan, but if the points were just between the top 16, then it would be a real dogfight to the end. But that's the rules, and we'll come back next year and try to be in it.
You know, it's just racing, and we'll go on. I can't tell you how proud I am of these guys here sitting beside me and Chase Elliott because he is so much better than I even dreamed he could be, his maturity, and what his mom and dad have done to prepare him. He is wise way beyond his years. I'm super thrilled about that. That's what I'm going to enjoy here at Homestead.
Q. Talk to me about just the passion that goes into driver development for this team. It starts at late model and goes all the way up through Nationwide. What is it that drives both of you and even LW in this?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Well, I think that I enjoy racing the late models because it's a little bit easier at that level to give some guys opportunities to race. You're only talking about hundreds of dollars to go down to Hickory and run on the weekend, and to race in the Nationwide Series, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a guy to race. It's a bigger hill to climb. And also there's a grass‑roots feeling about it and feeling like you're still connected to where you started. It gives me a real good sense of pride.
I go to those‑‑ I went to Hickory and watched Josh run a 100 lapper a couple weeks ago. I hadn't seen him race in a long time, and I hadn't been to a late model show in a long time, and that was just a bonus thing just being there and watching that race and I wanted to be out there so bad. I'm trying to figure out how I can sneak out there and run a couple without anybody knowing.
You know‑‑ and on the Nationwide side, we were able to get Josh in a car, and we ran him tonight, and we ran him at Iowa. We've given Bowman and all kinds of guys opportunities. It's a real challenge to find the support you need to get those guys in the seat, but it happens, and you've just kind of got to keep pushing and plugging and pulling to make it work, and you've got to be very patient, too, as the driver. It's hard to tell Josh Berry to wait his turn, or any driver, really, that wants that opportunity.
What's crazy now is the way the sport has sort of evolved. We've got more talent out there than we've got race cars. You're seeing so much talent in the K&N Series and in the Truck Series, and even in the Nationwide Series, that there's just so many guys out there that I think have real good speed and just need the right breaks with the right people and right equipment. There's only so many races and so many partners and so many race teams, but that's a good problem to have when you've got more drivers than you've got cars.
I enjoy it, and especially when they run well. With Bowman running the way he ran at Phoenix, man, that was great to see. I can't imagine what that did for his confidence. He's been out there plugging away in that 23 car, grinding his guts out all year long trying to just stay in the sport somehow, and he was able to get in that car and really show what he's capable of and how fast he can be if somebody‑‑ hopefully, the right person saw him that day, and if we can't help him, someone else can. It's just the kind of stuff I like to do.
Q. Kelley, we heard Dale talk about kind of his recollections of things that come to mind with winning his championship, things he went through. What are things that come to mind from the beginnings from your perspective and what you guys went through?
KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: Gosh, really the same things. I feel like when we started in 2005, it was the spring that we had decided that maybe we'd go nationwide racing in 2007, and we were having conversations, and then the Navy thing came together in the fall of '05 and pushed us to starting in 2006. They said if you want to do this with our money, we need to be there in 2006. And, literally, we bought a building in September and we move in in January, and we started our race team.
It seemed like it was a lot easier then than it is now, but like Dale said, we struggled those first few years just with a rotation of drivers and trying to figure it out and get it right, and then when we‑‑ in 2008 when we got the opportunity to run Brad full‑time and he was just such a great talent, to have him for a couple years, you know, it's hard to see people move in and out of our seats as drivers. I know that's what we're there for, but it keeps us on our toes each year to fill the car with talent and partner them with sponsors so we can continue to make it all work.
It's a lot of fun, and it's very rewarding because it is so much more challenging now to put all the pieces together that it takes to compete in the series.
Q. How often did you guys look at each other and go, what are we doing?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Probably once every two years.
KELLEY EARNHARDT MILLER: We had an aha moment a couple years ago, and we were like, what are we doing? Mr.Hendrick asks us what we're doing more often because he's got a lot more experience than we do.
You know, it really is‑‑ Kerry alluded to it, it's a labor of love, and we don't do it because we're padding our pockets, but we do do it because we give opportunities to people like Chase Elliott and Josh Berry and Regan Smith and Eric Almirola and Brad Keselowski and the crew chiefs that have come through. That's the vision Dale had when he started JR Motorsports, and we're continuing to keep that up, whether it's crew members or drivers, and that's really the passion that we have for us and our employees. When I think about how hard it is, I think about the 120 people that we feed and all of their families, and they have the same passion that we do for the sport, and that's why they do it, and I think that's what keeps us going.
Q. You talked about the way you guys felt when you got into this. What does this championship mean for the future of JR Motorsports and attracting these sponsors to put these guys in these cars and things like that?
DALE EARNHARDT JR.: Well, I think for me in the Nationwide Series and for our company, we've never really looked too far into the future in our partnerships and programs typically are short‑term, year to year. I know that as the economy sort of rebooted and we paired ourselves with Greg and Chase and also Harvick, I mean, I know the phone has been ringing a lot more often, especially due to the success we've had. Hopefully, more partners want to get involved with what we're doing, and I think the success on the racetrack and performance on the racetrack is always reflective of that. When we were running well, we had an abundance of opportunity, and when we struggled, we struggled inside and outside the car.
I think that this definitely is going to propel us maybe into a new realm that we've not experienced yet, and I think we've got a great staff and a lot of great employees ready for it, and I look forward‑‑ we've got another year next year with Chase. We're excited to continue our relationship with NAPA and Harvick and all that stuff is coming back, and he's excited. We're working with Regan again. Everything is really‑‑ we've got three great, full teams. I remember the years when we would contemplate whether we were going to a one‑car team or not in the off‑season. I mean, you just work one year at a time in this series. I don't know if it's any different in the Cup level, but it's‑‑ I like that challenge, as tough as it can be at times. It's almost a part of the enjoyment when you succeed at doing it.
KERRY THARP: Congratulations to JR Motorsports on this championship. Kelley, Dale, Mr.Hendrick, thank you for coming in, and enjoy this championship.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
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