With youngest Championship 4 field, NASCAR’s Cup Series future will be on display
It took Christopher Bell a second to remember the age of the youngest driver in the NASCAR Cup Series — a field that seems to get younger and younger by the year.
It didn’t detract from his larger point, though.
“I love this sport because you have guys like Ty Gibbs, who — I think he just turned 21, right?” Bell said in the Phoenix Raceway media center on Thursday afternoon. “So he’s young. And then you have guys like Kevin Harvick, who’s in his 40s. And they’re competing against each other. And each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses.
“And that’s fascinating to me. What other sport is that possible in?”
Not many.
Another pertinent question:
What other era is this possible in?
The 2023 NASCAR season began in a moment of youth, of sorts. Kurt Busch had retired. Kevin Harvick had announced that the 2023 season would be his last. Young talent was not only filtering into the sport but winning in it, too, so much so that president Steve Phelps told reporters in his end-of-2022 state of the sport speech that “we’re seeing a lot more influx of young people from a fan perspective; a lot of that is being driven by the young drivers themselves.”
About 10 months since the start of the 2023 season, the sport’s youth is being put in the spotlight again.
Per NASCAR, the average age of this year’s Championship 4 — which will race for the season title on Sunday at 1 p.m. ET at Phoenix Raceway — is 28 years, 11 months and 25 days. That makes Kyle Larson (31), Ryan Blaney (29), Christopher Bell (28) and William Byron (25) the youngest final four contenders since the dawn of the modern playoff system, which began in 2004.
The youngest group before this year?
2022.
A lot of that could be because young drivers are getting chances with good, ready-to-compete teams earlier than before. A lot could also be a function of the equalizing nature of the Next Gen car, and the uniquely deep driver field NASCAR is experiencing now — or a combination of a bunch of related factors.
Whatever the cocktail is, Blaney called it an “interesting age” of NASCAR.
“Makes me feel old,” Blaney said with a smile through a scruffy beard. “But no, it’s just neat to see all different kinds of ages, right? You see such a wide variety throughout the years of the Final 4, of guys with tons of years under their belts, guys with only a handful of years. All of that kind of culminates, and this just one of those ones that everybody is in the middle of their career.”
Byron is the youngest in the Championship 4, but he appears to be entering his prime — which, at 25, is a bit on the earlier side in NASCAR. That of course is aided by the fact that he’s been driving for Hendrick Motorsports since he was 18 in 2016 and was thrust into the Cup Series a mere two years later.
It’s much different now than when Byron first entered the sport, the driver of the No. 24 car chuckled Thursday.
“It’s kind of funny because when I came into the Cup Series, it was the old versus new, and the old guys ruled with Harvick and Jimmie (Johnson),” Byron said. “Those guys were dominating races. And Truex. It was kind of a joke that — the younger guys, it’s kind of a joke that NASCAR promoted us so much. People were laughing at it.
“We’re here now. It’s cool. It’s all the guys I grew up racing against. I think all these guys are going to win multiple races a year for the next few years.”
Kyle Larson, the favorite to win Sunday who some say is one of the best interdiscipline drivers to sit behind a wheel, agreed.
“It’s odd,” said Larson, whose most resonant nickname throughout his career has been “Young Money.” “I’m the oldest at Hendrick Motorsports, the oldest in this Final 4. Maybe I am getting old. I don’t feel old.”
He added: “No, yeah, I don’t know, the sport’s gotten to a place where a lot of the guys who have been in it now for a couple decades, with Harvick retiring this weekend, Aric Almirola (who announced his retirement last week) has been a part of the sport for a long time. I think there’s a lot of young talent that I guess they’re getting a little bit older now and gaining that experience, they’re with really good race teams and can go perform.”
To say this youth movement has been celebrated everywhere — and is without flaw — wouldn’t be true. There are conceivable downsides to it. Younger stars are harder to market, some contend; they don’t have as much of a story because they haven’t lived as much life. There’s the rationale, too, that young drivers getting early shots at Cup didn’t earn their rides the same way the older, more veteran guys did.
All-time great driver and NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart made these opinions clear when he hired then-32-year-old Josh Berry to replace Harvick in the summer.
“I’m not interested in some kid’s father coming in and buying their way into the Cup Series,” Stewart, the SHR co-owner and NASCAR Hall of Famer, said in June. “I have zero interest in that. We want guys who earn their way, who work hard, who understand the values it takes to be a top-tier driver — not one who just got his high school diploma and all of a sudden is a Cup Series driver. I’ve got zero interest in that.”
The young cycle pushes on nevertheless. Carson Hocevar, 20, and Zane Smith, 24, will have full-time Cup rides in 2024. Ty Gibbs was in the mix for playoff contention as a rookie and will only get better. Austin Cindric, the 2022 Daytona 500 winner, has had his year-delayed rookie moments this year but has also shown flashes of potential.
And if it continues, drivers who are not old by anyone’s standards — by any sport’s standards, much less NASCAR’s — will become the veterans.
When asked when Bell will officially feel like one of the “old guys” of the sport, the 28-year-old driver who is making his second straight Championship 4 appearance shook his head and smiled.
“I’m getting there,” he said. “Certainly with Ty coming in. When I came into the sport, I was older than Chase (Elliott) and older than Byron and I’m sure a handful of other ones. I’m getting up there. Now we got Ty in there. You have Carson Hocevar coming up. Zane Smith.”
“The tide is turning,” Bell added.
It began turning a while ago, too.
This story was originally published November 4, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "With youngest Championship 4 field, NASCAR’s Cup Series future will be on display."
