NASCAR’S Next Young Guns
Mike Hembree – The Greenville News
Jimmie Johnson, Ryan Newman, Kurt Busch and Jamie McMurray carried the banner of Young Guns through a remarkable 2002 NASCAR Winston Cup season, irritating veteran drivers and spurring a surge of interest in 20-something competitors. They shouldn’t look over their shoulders.
There are some really young guns waiting in the shadows of the garage area. Try these names and ages ó Brian Vickers (19), Shelby Howard (17), Kyle Busch (18), Jeremy Clements (18).
Only NASCAR’s relatively new rule prohibiting drivers from racing in the sanctioning body’s top three series Winston Cup, Busch and Craftsman Truck before their 18th birthday has kept the average age of competing drivers from creeping significantly lower.
Busch, the younger brother of Roush Racing star Kurt Busch, was well on his way to the big top, for example, racing and making noise in the Craftsman Truck series before NASCAR put the brakes on his acceleration with the 18-and-over decision.
Considered by some a better talent than his brother, Busch had to drop back to American Speed Association racing and cool his heels. He turned 18 on May 2 and ó finally “legal” ó jumped into one of the first available Busch races, last Saturday’s Carquest 300 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
The result was significantly better than that of the average race rookie in a key NASCAR series. Busch led 33 laps and finished second.
Vickers, the old man of this young group, already is a full-time competitor in the Busch series and has had a noteworthy season in Hendrick Motorsports cars. Only a controversial decision by NASCAR kept him from scoring his first series win at Texas Motor Speedway in March. He is eighth in series points.
Howard has become the youngest winner in the history of the Automobile Racing Club of America series and has his eye on Winston Cup. Clements, a Spartanburg resident whose family has three generations of ties to racing, raised some eyebrows with a third-place finish in an ARCA race at Lowe’s Motor Speedway last week.
It seems they’re riding into town younger every year, continuing a phenomenon that began when then-21-year-old Jeff Gordon arrived on the Winston Cup scene in 1992. He proved that young drivers can go fast quickly, and teams’ driver searches have skewed closer to 20 ever since.
Scott Riggs, a relatively ancient 32-year-old hoping to use Busch series success to move into a Winston Cup ride in the next few years, notes that, “Pretty soon, we’ll have drivers coming along in diapers.”
There are no nurseries in the garage area yet, but it should be noted that Vickers missed his high school prom to drive in a Busch race at Bristol, Tenn., last year and Clements passed up the Dorman High School graduation ceremony because of Charlotte race commitments.
“It looks like the trend is getting younger and younger to try and spot these guys to get them in good equipment and start teaching them the right things early,” said Johnson, a young gun last season at 26.
NASCAR official Kevin Triplett said NASCAR put in the “18 rule” after considerable study.
“I think a lot of it is maturity,” he said. “Maturity is a key. It’s hard to judge a person’s maturity by age. You could easily have an 18-year-old who’s more mature than a 24-year-old. By the same token, with 18 being a fairly universal mark of adulthood in a lot of ways, that’s an easier number.
“Sixteen is when you get your driver’s license (in some states), but this isn’t exactly a highway out here. Based on the barometer set by a lot of other things at 18, we felt like that that was an easier thing, at least from a maturity standpoint. It’s a fairly standard barometer.”
The rule, which went into effect before the 2002 season, cost Busch, then 16, a Roush Racing ride in the Craftsman Truck series.
“It put me back,” Busch said. “I had to go back and run ASA for a year, and you can’t really learn much there except patience in long races. The cars are so equal, it’s really hard to be successful there. But NASCAR had to do what they had to do.
“I was running the truck series and being successful. They made the rule change, but now I’m back. Then, it was kind of tough.”
Howard became ARCA’s youngest winner this year (breaking a record set, appropriately enough, by Busch).
“I turn 18 in July, so I can’t do anything but this until then,” Howard said. “I’d like to get in a Busch car if something comes along. That’s where I want to be.
“I’m only 17, and getting to race these tracks (ARCA races on several superspeedways that also host NASCAR events) and getting some experience on them and getting my name out there helps.”
Vickers, a graduate of NASCAR Weekly Series racing, has a leg up on the other teen-agers, having showed his worth this season in a high-profile ride with Hendrick Motorsports. He raced in the Busch series with an under funded operation owned by his family before getting a shot with Hendrick, one of motorsports’ wealthiest operations.
Vickers said he doesn’t have to worry about career planning and the process of moving up in racing as long as he performs at Hendrick.
“They know when the time’s right, and I just put it in their hands,” he said. “You want a young driver that you can grow and build with and is going to be there for a long time. When they say I’m ready (for Winston Cup), I’ll go. They’ve done a really good job with drivers like Jeff (Gordon) and Jimmie (Johnson), and I believe in them.”
