So Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Kurt Busch and Mark Martin are dueling for the Cup championship. Tony Stewart is right there behind them. And Dale Earnhardt Jr. is sitting in the top 5, on the cusp of a possible championship run.
What? I'm talking about this day in 2004, not 2009.
The point being, of course, that five years ago, NASCAR looked a whole lot like it does today at the top of the standings. Guys like Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch and Juan Pablo Montoya have made their charges, but for the moment, and for the foreseeable future, it's the same dudes at the top of the standings.
Which is fine and good, everybody likes continuity. But who are the next generation of great NASCAR drivers, the post-Logano generation? (Yes, we're already using the phrase "post-Logano.") As Bob Pockrass notes in an interesting article in today's Scene Daily, we're at the final race of the 2009 season, and there's not one rookie scheduled to run in 2010 in the Sprint Cup series.
Brad Keselowski doesn't quite qualify as a rookie, having run 14 races already. And as Pockrass notes, there aren't any Nationwide drivers ready to make the step up to full Cup status. Joey Logano benefited from a patient owner in Joe Gibbs and a huge sponsorship hole left by the departure of Tony Stewart from JGR; it's not likely Logano would have run in a Sprint Cup ride had Smoke never left.
Pockrass points to a more ominous development -- that the lack of rookies is a result of a lack of sponsorship of Nationwide and Truck Series drivers. The sponsors' reluctance to throw money at Nationwide drivers is understandable; Sprint Cup drivers have owned the Nationwide circuit, and there's not a whole lot of room -- or money -- for young up-and-comers to develop. And with the economy the way it is, it doesn't look like things will be changing anytime soon.
So, yeah ... if you're not crazy about the current crop of NASCAR leaders, you might want to rethink your position.
State of developing drivers a bigger concern [Scene Daily]
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