Kelley Earnhardt, President and co-owner of JR MOTORSPORTS - the hottest team in NASCAR.

Atlanta, February, 3, 2009: Kelley Earnhardt has proven, motorsports is no longer just a "Good ol’ Boys Club". It’s fitting that another woman is credited for crafting Danica’s NASCAR deal and creating biggest story in motorsports for 2010. Considered one of the most prominent businesswomen in NASCAR today, Kelley Earnhardt, President and co-owner of Jr. Motorsports, is the backbone to the business interests of her brother, NASCAR driver, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and the person responsible for negotiating the terms of the two year deal bringing the IndyCar star to the NASCAR Nationwide Series. Among all the clutter and controversy that a personality such as Danica Patrick brings to racing, she also brings the brilliant klieg lights of a voraciously hungry media and a challenged motorsport industry eager to produce exciting news. Kelley Earnhardt is no stranger to that media circus having handled the frenzy that surrounds Dale, Jr., winner of more than 40 NASCAR-sanctioned races and voted NASCAR's Most Popular Driver seven times.

During the recent press conference announcement in Phoenix, Arizona, home to primary sponsor, GoDaddy.com, Kelley was asked if there is anything she has learned from those experiences which can help Danica:

“Yes, I guess we can pull from our experiences with Dale Jr. Obviously, I’ve worked with him for the past eight years, so I have a lot of experiences to go by. What it’s like to deal with someone who is very popular, and who people always want things from. We can share that experience with Danica; but I think she’s pretty used to that where she comes from. It will only be heightened on the NASCAR side. Our fan base is extremely loyal. It will bring a new level of attention to her that she’s probably not dealt with on the aspect of NASCAR. But I’m sure she’s used to a lot of it.”

What was the most challenging thing for creating the Danica package for JR Motorsports? “I don’t think there was anything that was the most challenging for us. Figuring out what Brad [Keselowski] was looking to do, and once he made the decision for to go to Penske and Cup, it opened the door for us to really evaluate the opportunity with Danica, and get really serious about that. So that was kind of late in the game for the year. I didn’t find anything really challenging about it. We hit it off from the first time we met. Obviously, we’ve been partners with Go Daddy, so we know how they work. Just getting all the variables together on how she wanted it to work and how Go Daddy wanted it to work was really the challenge. You do that with every sponsor and driver.”

Can you talk about how you might appeal to new fans in NASCAR with a women owner, women driver combination? “Well, I think that is what’s really exciting about it, is the female aspect. Obviously, there are lots of demographics in NASCAR. Females are the ones who are buying products and taking care of the homes, and supporting a lot of the brands that are in NASCAR. I’m excited about the young girls and bringing them up as fans in the sport, and really just the power of women in general. So they can look at somebody like Danica, or myself, and say, ‘hey, that’s something I want to do’. They can see that it’s feasible for it to be done. I think that is what’s really fun about it. The way the young females can gravitate toward it and it can open up a door for people to become fans of NASCAR motorsports.”

Inspiring young girls to achieve their dreams includes Kelley’s two precious daughters, Karsyn and Kennedy. “They are my complete inspiration just for living. I look at them every day and have this vision of who I want them to be and how I want them to turn out as young women and just be independent and do for themselves and make their mark on the world in whatever way that they want to do that.”

The daughter of legendary race car driver and seven-time NASCAR Winston Cup champion, Dale Earnhardt, Sr., it’s only natural that Kelley got behind the wheel growing up and competed late model stock cars 1993-1996 in the southeast. Her best finish? An impressive fourth. “Never did win, but I was competitive." Kelley says. “Here in North Carolina the short-track racing is very, very competitive. And at that time particularly. I mean,you have men out there that are 50 and that’s what they’ve done for 25 years! But I enjoyed it. I stopped racing because I started full-time in school. I went to college, raced while I was in college, and then worked as well. They would let me off my job on Fridays at two o’clock and I’d go racing. And I just started to get a lot of responsibility at my job and I got promoted and I pretty much just made a choice that that was it. I didn’t have the focus and the dedication to put into being a driver that you needed as a female. It’s a very difficult thing to tap into.”

Kelley’s business degree from UNC-Charlotte is put to good use as she masters the many demands of Jr. Motorsports. Under her leadership, the company has grown from its infancy in 2001 to over 100 employees today and fields full-time teams in the NASCAR Nationwide Series as well as three late model programs that tour tracks across the southeast. Once housed in a small shop on Earnhardt,Jr.’s property, the team now operates out of a large 66,000-square-foot facility that serves as the nucleus of Earnhardt Jr.’s racing operation and business interests. Kelley’s savvy leadership maximized Dale, Jr.’s marketing appeal, and expanded his business portfolio to include many subsidiary companies including JRM Retail, the licensing and merchandising division for the JR Nation Retail Store; DEJ Realty, a full-service real estate brokerage firm; and Hammerhead Entertainment, a state-of-the-art, fully High-Definition facility, complete with two HD video editing suites, an audio recording suite and a large shooting studio. The studio has produced everything from major television commercials to nationally broadcast programming. Some of its work includes Dale Jr.'s Unrestricted, Shifting Gears and Back in the Day. ABC, Direct TV, ESPN, FOX and NBC are just some of the stations that have showcased its handiwork. In 2007, Kelley was the recipient of the Top 25 Women in Business Achievement by Charlotte Business Journal. And in an Associated Press article in April 2007, Kelley was referred to as “one of the most powerful people in the sport of NASCAR”. Aside from her duties as her brother’s chief negotiator and business manager, Kelley is on the Board of Directors for the Dale JR. Foundation, is the incorporating Director for Blue Harbour Bank, and is co-owner of the Mooresville, N.C. Retail store “Scrap Shack”.

Looking to the 2010 season and the energy and enthusiasm the “Danica Deal” has sparked, Kelley reflects: “From a JR Motorsports perspective, we’re just really thrilled to be partnered back with Go Daddy, and continue that relationship, and bring Danica into NASCAR. It will be what it is. We’ll give her everything there is to give and all the resources to get out there and do a good job. We’ll see what that looks like. But there certainly is pressure for all of us to perform, no doubt.”

No doubt, thanks to the women fueling motorsports today, it’s going to be a terrific season to watch!

More info: www.trackchic.com

Image: JR Motorsports, Getty Images, Speed TV/ESPN/Michelle Zipp