Ty Gibbs, Noah Gragson, Christopher Bell next faces of NASCAR?

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.

Kurt Busch pondered the question Friday morning: Who’s left?

“I mean, with myself, with (Kevin) Harvick, we’re the class of 2001,” Busch said. “The class of 2002 is Jimmie Johnson and Ryan Newman. ‘03 I think was Biff (Greg Biffle). ‘04 was Kasey Kahne. And ‘05 was my little brother.”

He then laughed: “Kyle Busch will be the elder statesman here pretty soon. That’s pretty wild to think about.”

Kurt Busch offered these thoughts in the Daytona International Speedway media center on Friday, just like he has in years past. He spoke in his trademarked soft-spokennes. A Monster Energy hat sat on his head. The 2004 NASCAR Cup Series champion, who announced his concussion-expedited retirement in October, said that he’s done mostly everything he’d normally do during Daytona 500 week this week.

The one change? Instead of preparing to race for NASCAR’s most prestigious checkered flag, he’s been helping strategize with Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace, or he’s been “putting his arm around” fellow Monster Energy rep Ty Gibbs, the Xfinity Series champion with a seemingly limitless ceiling.

He’s busy being a consultant for 23XI Racing: exchanging knowledge, passing on the sport’s mantle to NASCAR’s next generation.

“There’s always a changing of the guard, or a cycle,” Busch said. “That happens.”

And it’s happening right now.

NASCAR, in some ways, is living through a moment of youth. Young drivers have robust followings. Young teams are disrupting status quos and competing for championships. The sanctioning body is embracing the young fans it has and is trying to find more — hosting an exhibition race in Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum earlier this month; scheduling a street race through Chicago for later this year; commissioning a documentary that resembles Formula 1’s “Drive to Survive,” which cultivated a fandom so successfully that non-racing sports are trying to get in on the action, too.

And on Sunday, in NASCAR’s biggest race and on its biggest stage, that generation will be on full display.

Alex Bowman, 29, will sit on the pole. Christopher Bell, the 28-year-old who made an improbable run to last year’s Championship 4, will start in P5. Daniel Suarez and Ross Chastain — the front-men to NASCAR’s surprise team of last season, TrackHouse Racing — signed contract extensions during this speedweek.

Chase Briscoe, who’s been in the Cup Series for two full seasons, will soon be the veteran of Stewart-Haas Racing after Kevin Harvick retires. Last season’s rookie of the year, Austin Cindric (24), sits sixth and hopes to repeat as Daytona 500 champion.

You could go on.

Perhaps the most compelling young drivers in the series are Ty Gibbs and Noah Gragson.

Gibbs, the 20-year-old grandson of Joe Gibbs Racing’s namesake, will begin his first full-time Cup Series season on Sunday. The driver of the 54 car got a ton of time in a car last year, racing in Kurt Busch’s stead as he was sidelined with a brain injury.

He will likely vie for rookie of the year with his 24-year-old contemporary (and at times fierce rival) Noah Gragson. The driver of the 42 car won eight Xfinity races in 2022, including four in a row at one point, and will race full-time at the Cup Series level with Legacy Motor Club — a team on the come-up this season after seeing Erik Jones win the 2022 Southern 500 in September and a group that brought on-board NASCAR great Jimmy Johnson to the ownership side in November.

“I feel like we definitely should be able to have a shot to win it every weekend,” Gibbs told reporters earlier this week. “The rookie battle is part of it, but I think we should focus on different things, and that’s just getting experience, and getting better, and winning races, and worrying about getting in the playoffs and all that. I think the rookie battle is just a little battle inside of the whole deal.”

AJ Allmendinger, who made up the triumvirate of last season’s exciting Xfinity Series field with Gibbs and Gragson, will be transitioning to a full season in Cup racing as well this year. He’s older than them — Allmendinger is 41, embarking on what feels like the final stretch of a respectable career — and he’s seen them make rookie mistakes under a very bright spotlight. (Among those mistakes: Gibbs famously moved his own teammate out of the way in the final race of the semifinal stage of NASCAR’s Xfinity playoffs last year. He’s apologized a bunch for it since.)

“I’ve enjoyed both of them,” he said of Gibbs and Gragson. “They’ve made me step up our game every time I’m in a racecar. We’ve had our battles, and the good and the bad ones. But they’re two great guys in such a young part of their career, learning as they go.

“Obviously in this day and age of social media and TV cameras and microphones and everything, you make your mistakes, and you move forward and you learn from them. But it’s fun talking to those guys, and hopefully we can battle up front like we did in the Xfinity Series.”

At the end of last season, at his annual State of NASCAR presser in Phoenix, NASCAR president Steve Phelps acknowledged how important the youth movement is to the industry.

“People want to root for people that are like themselves, right? No one wants to root for me, right?” he said with a smile. “They want people that look like them, that have the same interests. 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.”

He added: “But you need to win, right? I think that was part of the issue with some of these young drivers. They weren’t winning. But they are now.”

And it has them here, a youth movement commanding the bright NASCAR spotlight. How far can it take them?