JR Motorsports newcomer Kelly Bires hopes hardest year of racing is behind him

Kelly Bires was sitting outside the JR Motorsports hauler last Friday afternoon wishing he was racing a car, frustrated over a year where he has truly raced only four times in the NASCAR Nationwide Series.

The impatient Bires will just have to wait a little longer before he’s back racing on a regular basis.

After spending 2007 running 26 races in the Nationwide and Truck series for JTG/Wood Brothers Racing and then a full 2008 in Nationwide where he finished 13th in the standings for JTG Daugherty Racing, the 25-year-old Bires did not have a full-time ride this year.

But after a year of frustration, the Wisconsin native has a full-time Nationwide ride for 2010 after signing a two-year contract with JR Motorsports.

“This was the hardest year of racing I have ever had,” Bires said in a phone interview Tuesday. “I’ve had years when I was back home Late Model racing on my own, building cars and finding sponsorship, basically living off the credit card to be able to go racing.

“And whatever your winnings were at the end of the night for that race, that’s how you paid your tire bill for that week. And if you tore your car up, you weren’t going to be racing the following week. I’ve had some hard times. That was plenty hard I thought. But this year has been by far more difficult. It’s just part of racing, the ups and downs, and whoever is strong survives.”

Bires got one of the biggest highs in racing when he got a phone call from Dale Earnhardt Jr. about a month ago asking Bires if he was interested in replacing Brad Keselowski, who is leaving for a Sprint Cup ride at Penske Racing. It has not been determined whether Bires will drive the No. 5 or the No. 88 (or both) for JR Motorsports, but he will compete for the series championship in 2010.

“It’s just a huge opportunity to work with an organization like JR Motorsports and Hendrick Motorsports, and to be able to go to a situation where we can run for a championship out of the box next year is going to be huge,” Bires said.

At the times when he has needed to perform this year, Bires has. He drove for Kevin Harvick Inc. at Nashville and finished fourth. He followed that with a 10th-place finish for KHI at Kentucky. He was then fifth at Iowa in a Braun Racing car and had a good run going for CJM Racing before an engine failure ended his day a few weeks ago at Atlanta.

“Just being able to jump in with new teams, new people and not knowing what they’ve got and to make the most out of every situation added to it – I think everyone has seen when I did get in a car to run the full race, the ability that I had and I deserved an opportunity,” Bires said.

While his performance this year showed he could run with the series elite, Bires said it’s been the racing he has done since 2007 that will help him thrive with JR Motorsports.

“It’s prepared me in the fact that it’s really proven me as a driver to the other drivers on the track – the give-and-take and all that stuff,” Bires said. “It earns you respect in the garage area as a driver.

“It’s helped introduce me into the sport to where I have better knowledge of how it works, how it runs and am more comfortable. I just know how this circus runs, and I think it’s prepared me for an opportunity where I can go to JR Motorsports and excel and never look back.”

After the year he’s had, Bires isn’t too concerned about being in the spotlight driving for JR Motorsports. He said it will take a lot of hard work to be successful and while he knows that Earnhardt Jr.’s team gets extra attention, he isn’t expecting that to impact results.

“That [attention] doesn’t get to me,” Bires said. “I know the ability I’ve got and the team that I’m working with. I know that we’re just going to excel.”

Having the spotlight on him is probably better than being in the shadows of the sport. This year has been more than just about racing for Bires. He’s had to work the sponsorship angle as well as he sought to find a ride.

“I was working on sponsorship deals … [that] I could bring to teams,” Bires said. “If there was any way I could get in first-class equipment, that is what I was going to do. To be honest with you, 2009 has been way busier than any full-time year I have ever had.

“The feeling of not knowing and just the amount of work and effort that I had to put in to make something happen – there’s no regular schedule. It’s been whatever you got to do to survive. When you’re in a car full time, you have a schedule you can live by and it goes pretty smooth. This year, if something came about, I had to do it and it put everything else on hold. It took a lot of energy out of me, but it feels good that it paid off.”

Bires is going back home to Wisconsin this weekend with a much different attitude then he had one year ago during a weekend off in the Nationwide Series schedule.

“Going into Richmond a year ago, we knew we didn’t have a sponsor for the next year and the last 10 races were being run well under-funded just to get through the end of the year,” Bires said. “We knew we had to make the most out of every opportunity we could. We actually ran extremely well the last 10 of last year.

“Just knowing going into the next year we didn’t have anything, it was not a good feeling going into the offseason. I chose to work hard and to do what was necessary and when I did get opportunities, I knew I could perform. Bottom line, that’s all it was. If I didn’t perform, opportunities probably weren’t going to come about for 2010. So I put a lot of pressure on myself, worked really hard and am thankful it came through.”