James Kelley, better known as “Big Jim”, hopped in his signature K-7 Late Model for the first time in several years when he tested the car at Carteret County Speedway Tuesday.

Just don’t say he’s coming out of retirement.

“I never retired,” Kelley ensures. “The tracks retired me. They got rid of my class. They got rid of Late Model Sportsman cars.”

“I’ve got fifty, sixty thousand dollars in it,” Kelley continued. “If the tracks don’t run it, I can’t run what I’ve got and I can’t sell it because nobody’s running it. I’ve got everything just like I had before, just haven’t been running it.”

If everything is just like it was before, that could be bad news for Kelley’s competition when he returns to racing. The 51-year-old Newport, North Carolina native has amassed 20 championships and 197 wins over the course of his career.

Kelley’s first track championship came at the Wilson County Speedway, a now-defunct half-mile dirt track in Wilson, North Carolina, in 1985. Kelley continued to accumulate championships in the Late Model Sportsman divisions at Wilson County, East Carolina Motor Speedway, Southern National Motorsports Park, and Wake County Speedway over the next 23 seasons.

From 1997 to 2000, Kelley won seven North Carolina track championships, doubling up on Fridays at Wake County and Saturdays at either Southern National or East Carolina in 1997, 1998, and 2000. Kelley also won two Florida Speedweeks points championships, in 1996 and 1999 at Volusia County Speedway and St. Augustine Speedway.

In 2000, Kelley finished sixth in the NASCAR Weekly Racing Series’ Atlantic Seaboard Region, claiming the Late Model Stock track championship at Southern National for the year. That crown snapped a streak of three consecutive seasons in which Jamey Caudill had won the division’s title at the Lucama, North Carolina oval.

Kelley hopes that he will return to action at the new Carteret County Speedway, a 0.400 mile oval in nearby Swansboro, North Carolina. However, that will depend on whether he will be able to race his famed K-7 at the facility.

“I don’t know if they’re running our class right now,” Kelley said. “They’re planning around two or three races this year for us. We’re gonna try to run there. The place is right here in our backyard, so if they’ll run our class, I’ll go run.”

Similar to Bobby Allison’s claim of holding 85 NASCAR Grand National victories (rather than NASCAR’s tally of 84), Kelley believes he has won 200 races during his career. However, he would like to “officially” claim his 200th victory to seal the milestone.

“There’s three races I won, but the track didn’t agree that I won the race, so I don’t count them,” Kelley explained. “We’ll go try to get them officially.”

“I’m already there. It’ll be good to say I can list 200,” he continued. “One race, I had a flat tire, they said it wasn’t flat enough. How flat does it gotta be?”

Kelley was optimistic about the test today, saying it felt good to be back in the car.

“We went up there and ran about 20, 25 laps or so,” Kelley said. “It’s been about two and a half or three years since I ran. It felt pretty good.”

If so, official win number 200 may be just around the corner.