It’s been two weeks since Martin Truex Jr. announced his retirement from full-time NASCAR Cup Series competition, which will bring his illustrious, surely Hall-of-Fame-worthy career to a close at the conclusion of the 2024 season.
Pending any truly shocking Silly Season developments, that will mean that entering 2025, only two active full-time drivers remain who competed in the 2006 season – the year of peak NASCAR, at least according to television ratings. It was the pre-Recession era stock car racing boom, the few years when NASCAR was the second-most-popular spectator sport in America and intermediate speedways were being stamped out across the country and beyond (England and Germany even got in on the action).
Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were household names. Even if you didn’t follow racing, you’d seen them on TV commercials and billboards, as cardboard cutouts at K-Mart and printed on cans of your soft drink beverage of choice.
From among the gladiators of stock car racing’s imperial period, now only Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin remain – with Jimmie Johnson, not yet adjusted to his Next Gen Toyota, in a part-time supporting role.
On its face, this doesn’t appear to be a problem. For every Kasey Kahne who called it quits, we got a Ryan Blaney in return. As was promised (perhaps a bit too early) by FOX Sports’ 2018 marketing campaign, the young guns waged war against the old guard – and prevailed. For as fast as Matt Kenseth or Kurt Busch could be, they couldn’t outrun Father Time.
The new generation of Cup Series superstars are no less talented or personable than the titans of 20 years ago. The margin from first to 36th is as close as it’s ever been. The depth of talent in the Cup Series right now is staggering. But the thing is, if you walked down Main Street in almost any city in America, (maybe not Mooresville or Indianapolis) approached someone at random, and asked them to name a racecar driver, they’d probably say, “Dale Earnhardt Jr.” or “Jeff Gordon.”
(Okay, to be fair, a lot of them would say “Ricky Bobby” in reference to Talladega Nights, a movie that came out in – wait for it – 2006.)
Earnhardt and Gordon are well-deserved Hall of Famers, the most popular drivers of the most popular era of the sport of stock car racing. Their names, numbers and sponsors are known to anyone who’s set foot in an antique store south of the Mason-Dixon. But…
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