Did You Notice?… 42-year-old Martin Truex Jr. started off the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season by ending a year-long winless streak? His victory at the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum was his first since Richmond Raceway in September 2021.
Technically, it doesn’t count as a points win, but Truex was one of several older drivers that impressed out in L.A. Fellow 42-year-old Denny Hamlin won his Heat race, then led 26 laps in the main event before Bubba Wallace knocked him out of the way (driving the car Hamlin owns). Kyle Busch, a kid by comparison at age 37, swapped some paint up front and charged all the way back to third after an incident with defending NASCAR champion Joey Logano.
Names that were nowhere to be seen? Chase Elliott. Ryan Blaney. Christopher Bell (after flashing some early speed). For one week, at least, the sport’s talented 20-somethings took a back seat to the veterans who’ve carried the torch for NASCAR much of this century. Having Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson commentating on it all, men with 10 total Cup championships between them from 2005-2016, seemed like the perfect backdrop for a veteran resurgence.
One of the great questions in 2023 is whether Truex, Hamlin and others can sustain that momentum. 2022 felt like a year of transition in this sport; in the first year running the Next Gen chassis, it was the first time in the history of the elimination-style playoffs all drivers who made the Championship 4 were under age 35.
In fact, three of them were under 30: Bell, Elliott and Ross Chastain (who turned 30 during the offseason). That came one year after two 40-something drivers competed for the title; in 2022, only two 40-somethings even qualified for the 16-driver playoffs. Just one, Hamlin, made it past the Round of 16.
Can you say changing of the guard?
The question now is whether the cagey veterans have any Tom Brady adrenaline left in them. If not, it’s the latest transition to younger talent in NASCAR, one we’ve seen plenty of times before.
There was the rise of Dale Earnhardt, Bill Elliott and Rusty Wallace in the mid-1980s. Jeff Gordon followed in the mid-1990s, convincing NASCAR owners drivers could be Cup ready in their early 20s.
The floodgates opened up after that, with a generation’s worth of Hall of Fame talent entering the sport within five years: Johnson, Matt Kenseth, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Stewart, Kurt Busch and Harvick, among others. Those drivers mostly…
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