Bires wrestling his way into Nationwide Series contention

If you wanted to say Kelly Bires has wrestled his way to the NASCAR Nationwide Series, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch.
 
Bires was a two-time state wrestling champion in high school and had several scholarship offers to wrestle in college, too. Instead, he wanted to be a race car driver and pursued that goal.
 
“I had scholarship opportunities,” said Bires, who drives the No. 47 JTG Racing Ford in the Nationwide Series. “But I didn’t want to wrestle. Wrestling was just something I did. I was good at it, but it was just something I did. It wasn’t my life. After the last wrestling match of the year, I hung up my shoes and never put them back on until the first practice.”
 
Bires just wasn’t good at it, he was very good. In Wisconsin, like other states in the upper Midwest and Northeast, wrestling is a big deal. Kids start wrestling at a young age – in Bires’ case, he hit the mat when he was in kindergarten.
 
Bires wrestled until he was in third grade, when he decided to play basketball instead. When he got to high school, he went back to wrestling, and as a freshman, missed the state tournament by one spot.
 
But then he blossomed as a wrestler at Mauston High School. As a sophomore, Bires finished third in the state in the 103-pound class. He moved up to 112 as a junior, winning the state championship. And then he repeated as a senior.
 
The recruiting letters poured in, with big-time schools offering Bires a chance to wrestle at the next level. Among those interested were Wisconsin, N.C. State, Duke and several Ivy League schools.
 
No thanks, Bires said. He had other things on his mind. Besides, the physical strain of wrestling takes a toll on a young man’s body. Constantly, Bires had to worry about his weight.
 
He remembers weighing 125 pounds on a Monday, three days before a match – where he was supposed to weigh in at 112 pounds. Wrestlers call that “cutting weight,” and it’s a difficult task.
 
Bires would basically have to starve himself for three days. All the while, he’d go to school, practice from 3:30 to 6 p.m. and then run on the treadmill at home at night. There was no eating and no drinking, either. For three days.
 
“If you ate anything, it would be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” Bires said. “But you couldn’t drink anything, ever. It’d be like a sip.”
 
He’d need to be within 1.5 pounds of the target weight by Wednesday to make the match.
 
You’d think he’d be able to chow down after the Thursday meet, but his body couldn’t take the food.
 
“You couldn’t eat any more,” Bires said. “You’d puke it up, not eating anything all week.”
 
It’s one part of wrestling Bires doesn’t miss.
 
“There’s no way I would ever want to do it again,” he said.
 
Bires has always been naturally thin, a trait he gets from his mom, he said. Currently, he weighs 120 pounds.
 
“Someone said I’ve got a tapeworm,” he said with a smile.
 
Bires does have a bug, and it’s for racing. While he was wrestling in high school, he’d also spend nights working on a race car at his older brother’s heated shop.
 
He started racing go-carts at age 9, later moving to Super Late Models on local short tracks at age 16. After high school, Bires moved to North Carolina to get a racing education, landing a job with FitzBradshaw Racing as a mechanic.
 
He learned a lot about race cars at FitzBradshaw, knowledge he says still helps. But he wanted to drive.
 
At a ARCA test at Nashville Superspeedway, Bires got a chance to hop in a car and went pretty fast. That led to another test at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, where he later started an ARCA race. Bires qualified fourth and finished eighth in May 2004 in his first race on a track bigger than a half-mile.
 
But the offers didn’t come rolling in, and Bires went back to Wisconsin to race some more. At the end of 2005, he tested for an ASA Late Model team, getting a ride for the 2006 season – when he won the ASA Late Model championship.
 
That led to a job with Wood Brothers/JTG Racing, where Bires was supposed to run 19 Craftsman Truck Series races last year. Instead, Jon Wood had to step out of the team’s Busch Series ride, and Bires got a chance.
 
“I was really, really new at this stuff,” he said. “I had to learn a lot. I had to be able to learn a lot to tell him what I needed. Once we got
clicking, the last six races of the year, we had a couple of top-five cars, easily.”
 
The “we” is he and crew chief Scott Zipadelli, for the two have a solid relationship. Zipadelli, the younger brother of two-time Cup series champion crew chief Greg Zipadelli, has taken a leadership role for the younger Bires – not that Bires needs it.
 
“He’s a big boy,” Zipadelli said. “He’s young, but he’s a big boy. He’s very mature.
 
“He does all the right things, and that’s what makes it rewarding. I don’t have to tell him to wear the right shirt when you get to the race track or call and wake him up. He’s got a lot of desire and a lot of want-to. That’s how we’ve straddled some of the obstacles because he’s got the desire to do it.”
 
The obstacles include the numerous Sprint Cup drivers and teams that compete in the Nationwide Series – and the technology they bring. JTG Racing has gone out on its own this season, ending the alliance with Wood Brothers Racing.
 
Zipadelli and Bires don’t have access to seven-post chassis rigs, so they’ve had to race the “old-fashioned” way, Zipadelli said.
 
Bires has made 23 starts in the series, posting two top-10 finishes. This season, he’s been 12th at Daytona, 30th at Auto Club Speedway after an accident, 15th at Las Vegas and 12th at Atlanta. Not sparkling numbers, but not bad for a younger driver going against big competition.
 
“When we go to a track he hasn’t been to, he adapts very quick,” Zipadelli said. “He’s got a very realistic approach to what we’re trying to do. I have the same thing. The glass is half full, not half empty.”
 
Bires, though, wants more. He’s not satisfied with simply finishing 12th behind 11 Cup drivers. He wants to wrestle some wins, if you will.
 
“If our stuff’s right, I feel like we can run with anyone,” he said.