JR Motorsports will undergo a driver change to its #88 NASCAR Nationwide Series team effective this weekend when the series races at Texas Motor Speedway, general manager and co-owner Kelley Earnhardt announced. The organization has released 25-year-old Kelly Bires from his contractual driving duties of the #88 Chevy. NASCAR Sprint Cup Series regular Jamie McMurray, driver of the #1 Bass Pro Shops/McDonalds Chevry for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing, has agreed to a deal that puts him in the #88 JR Motorsports Chevy for nine races. Those races include the six upcoming Nationwide Series events Texas (April 17), Talladega (April 24), Richmond (April 30), Darlington (May 7), Dover (May 15) and Charlotte (May 30) plus Chicagoland (July 9), Atlanta (Sept. 4) and the return trip to Charlotte (Oct. 15). Hellmann’s will be the primary sponsor in all but two of those races, and the Suave Men brand will be featured on the #88 at Chicagoland Speedway.(JR Motorsports PR)(4-13-2010)>
UPDATE: Today on SIRIUS NASCAR Radio, hosts Rick Benjamin and Danny ‘Chocolate’ Myers spoke with JR Motorsports owner Kelley Earnhardt about the team’s decision to release driver Kelly Bires from the #88 NASCAR Nationwide Series car.
Kelley Earnhardt: “We made a driver change this morning with the decision to terminate Kelly and put Jamie McMurray in our car for the next, I believe he’ll be in the next six races and about nine races overall for us. In this business, with the way the sponsorships are going and the way the business is going, sometimes you have to make these tough decisions and it’s no different for us. It’s never something that’s easy to do. Kelly [Bires] is a fantastic guy but the chemistry on the team with our #88 crew, it just wasn’t working out for us and that’s extremely important to have all of the pieces of the puzzle together.”
Host/Rick Benjamin: “We had speculated and we’re thrilled that you could make a few moments to come on with us here and explain more about how these things are working. It’s very business driven in this sport today. Is it fair to say that the sponsor of the car had a chunk to do with this? I mean, obviously you didn’t win any races with Kelly, you didn’t have any but one top 10 in that six-race run.”
Kelley Earnhardt: “No, I don’t want to pin this on our sponsors at all. They did not specifically ask for a change. This was a call more from internally here at JR Motorsports with our ownership group and myself and Tony Jr. and Mr. Hendrick and Dale. We are a competitive, good team. Our team, Tony Sr., he’s led our team to a Championship contending team for the last two years. We’ve finished third in the points. We’re a top five running team and that’s what we sell our sponsorship on. So we want to keep ourselves in that position so that we don’t have sponsorships that are in jeopardy. In this case, Hellman’s, they are a great partner with us. They do a lot of their marketing around Dale Jr. with our #88 car. And it’s not necessarily driven by the driver in that car, per say, but it’s important to them to have the performance on the racetrack and have our car up front so, it’s part of it.”
Host/Chocolate Myers: “The business part of it I understand. You’re in business and you’ve got to protect your business. The other thing you talk about is chemistry. Why are teams successful? Because they’ve got everything going in the right direction. They have that chemistry. When you get to a point where that chemistry is just not working you can’t be successful. You can’t be successful when you don’t have every person on the team pulling in the same direction. Don’t know if that’s what the case was there [but] the results weren’t where you wanted them to be. They weren’t bad but you also said you guys expect to run in the top 5 week in and week out. You were running in the top 20. The results weren’t there. I guess all that played into the decision to go in a different direction?”
Kelley Earnhardt: “Well, it did. For us it was obvious that we needed a change because of what you just said. The chemistry, the dynamics, our results, they haven’t been where we’ve wanted them. I drive cars although on a much smaller level in the late model series when you don’t get along with your crew chief and your team and you don’t feel like your team is behind it, it could be one person – doesn’t even have to be the crew chief in that scenario – that you feel like is pulling against you, you’re constantly questioning yourself, the team’s questioning your abilities and what you’re doing, the team’s questioning themselves, they know that they’re better than that. And you usually have so much stuff going on in your mind that is working against you that you can’t overcome that and I feel like, in this situation, that the chemistry just wasn’t there with everyone on the #88 team and like you said, Chocolate, you can’t work in that direction because it doesn’t come back around.”(Sirius PR)(4-13-2010)
UPDATE 2: Sources tell Frontstretch that [Steve] Arpin is now the leading candidate to take the seat with the team that was formerly held by Kelly Bires.When asked about the chances of seeing him in a JRM car in the near future, Arpin revealed, “I’ve been working hard with JR Motorsports, actually since before Rockingham last year. We’ve developed a great relationship, and we definitely keep in touch. We’re definitely doing as much as we can to get an opportunity to get me in the seat. Our original plan over the offseason was, working hand in hand with the folks at JRM, to run the #7 car in all the races that Danica wasn’t running. [But] we’re definitely still talking a bunch. There’s nothing set in stone yet, but we’re definitely working on it.”(Frontstretch)(4-14-2010)
UPDATE 3: Earnhardt Jr. said he hopes Landon Cassill earns more races in his cars and said that ARCA Series driver Steve Arpin could see time in a JRM car as well. He said his goal is to have a young driver establish himself and be in the #88 car at the end of the year going into 2011.(Scene Daily)(4-16-2010)
UPDATE: ARCA driver Steve Arpin will make his NASCAR debut next weekend at Talladega when he drives the #7 car for JR Motorsports in the Nationwide Series, JRM co-owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. told SBNation.com on Friday. Arpin, a 26-year-old Canadian, will also run the Richmond race in JRMs 7 car the following week. Landon Cassill was originally scheduled to drive the Talladega and Richmond races but will return at Dover.(SB Nation)(4-16-2010)
