Just three years ago, the average age (at season’s end) of the 13 drivers who won races was 30.5. This race is only eight races old, but the average age of the winners so far is 35.7. At the moment, the profile of Sprint Cup winners looks a lot like the late 1980s or early ’90s. What was it like back in 1993? The youngest winner was 32 years old. The average was 38.2. Mark Martin, who won five races that year, was 34. Last week he won at age 50. He is the only winner common to both seasons, though then-rookie Jeff Gordon won an unofficial race, a 125-mile qualifier, at Daytona. In recent years, the great trend of the 1990s – younger and younger drivers gradually ousting the generation that preceded them – has reversed. Part of the reason is simply that a generation of great stars – Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth, et al. – has gotten older. But part of it is also that the effect of young drivers – the most notable exception being Kyle Busch – has waned. From 1999, when Stewart arrived to much fanfare, through 2007, when Juan Pablo Montoya was the top rookie, at least one rookie won a race six times in a span of eight years. Before 1999 and Stewart, 11 years had passed without the rookie of the year winning. It didn’t happen last year, and the odds appear long, based on results so far, that either of this year’s rookies, Joey Logano and Scott Speed, will score.(NASCAR This Week)(4-24-2009)
