Junior's winning car on display at HOF, for now
Jul 15, 2010
Junior's winning car on display at HOF, for now
By Joe Menzer, NASCAR.COM
The blue-and-yellow No. 3 Wrangler-sponsored Chevrolet that Dale Earnhardt Jr. drove to victory recently in a Nationwide Series race at Daytona International Speedway is now on display in the Great Hall at the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
But as with the existence of the car itself, it is for a limited time only.
Kelley Earnhardt, co-owner and general manager of JR Motorsports, said the organization cannot afford to keep the car completely out of action for long. And since her brother, Dale Jr., has said he will never drive the No. 3 again, that means the car eventually will cease to exist in its current state.
It therefore will remain on loan to the Hall until Sept. 19, after which it will be returned to JR Motorsports to have the body cut off of it so the chassis can be prepared to be run in future races.
We still have to get input from everybody, of course. But the chassis itself, being the new Nationwide chassis, we need that one," Earnhardt said Wednesday when the car, still covered with all the grit and grime accumulated during the dramatic win July 2 in the Subway Jalapeno 250 at Daytona, was unveiled at the Hall. "They've slaved and slaved in our shop to build them. We've got the Michigan race coming up this year where we'll use that chassis, and then next year we'll be using it full-time. So this chassis has a place somewhere on a race car at JR Motorsports.
"I've got to talk Dale [Jr.] into cutting the body off, or having the team cut the body off, and keeping it somewhere on display at JR Motorsports. But the car, all the parts and pieces other than the body, can be put to good use toward another win on another race track somewhere."
Kelley Earnhardt appeared at a news conference Wednesday with JR Motorsports co-owner Tony Eury Jr. and his father, Tony Eury Sr., who is a crew chief and key member of the organization as well. Dale Earnhardt Jr. could not make the shindig because he was on vacation during the rare off-week in NASCAR's Cup Series.
"I certainly didn't want to begrudge him that, but I also did not want to wait until he returned to take this car into our possession," said Winston Kelley, executive director of the Hall of Fame.
The car has historical significance because it is a replica of the No. 3 car once driven regularly by the late Dale Earnhardt, who was killed in a 2001 accident at the end of the Daytona 500. Everyone involved in putting together the deal that placed the car back on the track for one special race said it is fitting that it finds a place, albeit temporary, in the new NASCAR Hall of Fame. The deal was put in place to honor the elder Earnhardt's inclusion this year in the inaugural Hall of Fame class of five.
They also discussed again the importance of helping Earnhardt Jr. put it in Victory Lane at Daytona.
"As hard as we worked on this car, it's very gratifying," said Eury Sr., who once worked on the original blue-and-yellow Wrangler No. 3 driven by the elder Earnhardt. "A lot of effort was put into all six of our cars [with COT chassis that were taken to Daytona] -- but this car here, she was at the front of the line. We worked real hard on it. Hendrick [Motorsports] worked real hard on the engine.
"I worked on a blue-and-yellow car many, many years ago. To see that thing in Victory Lane again was just a dream come true, as hard as all the people at JR Motorsports worked to get it there."
His son, Tony Eury Jr., agreed and said he would like to see more NASCAR teams running cars with throwback schemes on them.
"You're sitting there, pushing the guys in the shop to work hard, extremely late nights. Wives and girlfriends are asking, 'What are y'all doing?' We put everything we had into that one race," Eury Jr. said. "It's just like Junior said in the media center [after the race]. Fifth was not going to be good enough for this car. It was a tribute to someone we all loved. It's like Pops has said, from the first lap that car made on the track, you were like, 'Wow. I'm glad I'm a part of this.'
"People just don't realize how many of the older generation of guys who drove against that car came up to me Friday and Saturday [of the Daytona race weekend] and said, 'Man, that is one of the coolest things we've seen come through this garage.' I wish more teams would do some throwback stuff. ... I'd like to see more of that on the track to remind us all of how we got here."
Kelley Earnhardt said the plan all along was to do something with the car when the race was over -- win or lose.
"As long as we didn't end up on our top like we have there before, we were going to try to do something with it. It's such a special deal," she said. "I think Tony Eury Jr. said it best when he said it was a tribute. To answer the question about driving the 3, that was Dale's meaning around [saying he wouldn't drive it again]; it was a tribute to our dad and it's not something he wants to do every day. But we definitely would have kept [the car] one way or another.
"We'd like to try to cut it off, take the body off, hopefully in one piece and then hang that upside down in our shop at JR Motorsports. That way we'd have at least one part of it. We'd like to take the whole car [and just put it on display], but, you know, we're a Nationwide team and that's $150,000 sitting there that we can use somewhere else. As long as we have the body, I think we'll be in pretty good shape."
Kelley Earnhardt credited Winston Kelley with persistence in seeing that the intact car at least spends some time in the Hall of Fame, where it can be shared with the public before being dismantled.
"Actually, Winston asked me a couple months ago when we did the unveiling of it at JR Motorsports. He was like, 'Can we have that car in the Hall of Fame?' And as soon as Monday rolled around after the win, sure enough he was asking again," she said.
"I had to tell him, 'Well, let me talk to competition and see what the use of the car is going to be.' So we're able to loan it out for a period of time -- but we've got three more COT races this year, which we're building chassis for, and we're going to go full-time [with the new Nationwide car] in 2011. We're going to need it back."
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