He didn't tuck in his shirt when he appeared before the cameras to announce his impending split with Dale Earnhardt Inc. He didn't tuck in his shirt for the news conference announcing his new five-year contract with Hendrick Motorsports. But when it came time to announce driver and sponsor extensions for his own Busch team, there was the notoriously scruffy Dale Earnhardt Jr., with a crisp, white shirt tucked neatly into a pair of pressed dark pants.

It's a concession that likely had to do with the presence of officials from the U.S. Navy, which is backing the No. 88 car of driver Brad Keselowski at JR Motorsports, and likes things to be spic-and-span. But it also says something of the affinity NASCAR's most popular driver has for his burgeoning enterprise on what will become the Nationwide Series next year. He may have 17 Nextel Cup wins, two Busch titles, a new contract with the sport's best team and a legion of passionate fans, but it's easy to see the pride he has in JR Motorsports, which started in 1999 with one employee. It's his baby, and it's grown up with him.

"I think the things that we have done at JR Motorsports and the things that we have went through, our trials, have been just as much of a learning experience as anything else as a lot of the stuff that has been well publicized in the Cup Series with the changes we made there," said Earnhardt, who signed Keselowski to a two-year extension prior to the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. "The Busch Series can be a lot of work. There is a lot of attention and focus that it requires, so we have had our hands literally full all year long."

JR Motorsports has come a long way since it was a one-man operation run out of a shed on DEI's property. Founded as a marketing tool to help the then-Busch driver Earnhardt sell a few more T-shirts, it became a racing entity in 2002 when Earnhardt and a few friends built a street stock and entered it in 10 races at Concord (N.C.) Motorsports Park with driver T.J. Majors behind the wheel. Over the next two years the team traveled the country, participating in bigger Late Model events, before breaking into the Hooters Pro Cup series with driver Mark McFarland in 2005.

Late that same season, JR Motorsports made its Busch debut. Earlier this year, the team moved into a new, 66,000-square-foot shop in Mooresville, N.C. And beginning next year, JR Motorsports and Hendrick Motorsports will combine operations for the Nationwide Series, fielding a two-car squad based out of Earnhardt's shop. Thirty employees were shifted from Hendrick's main campus to JR Motorsports in the move, which effectively makes Earnhardt and new Nextel Cup owner Rick Hendrick business partners. Earnhardt will own one of the two cars -- Keselowski's No. 88 -- and his boss the other.

For Earnhardt, playing car owner brings about experiences very different from those he encounters in his day job. There's the presence of family, like mother Brenda Jackson, sister Kelley Earnhardt Elledge, and uncles Danny Earnhardt and Tony Eury Sr., all employees at the JR Motorsports shop. There's dealing with sponsors, which occasionally forces him to tuck in his shirt. There's the sometimes unfortunate duty of firing a driver; earlier this season, he cut Shane Huffman loose for wrecking too many racecars. And there's also the credibility he feels he receives by tackling his own business enterprise, something he can't get behind the wheel. (Continued)