CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Young versus old. As always.
When the 2018 NASCAR Media Tour began, no one had any idea what topic would emerge to dominate the few annual days that stock car racing devotes to talking and writing, then talking, then writing. In years past, the theme was easy to guess. But this year, there was no press conference kicking off NASCAR itself. There was no big change to the playoff format (thank goodness), no announcement of series title sponsorship, nothing at all. No touchstone. No lightning rod. No instant talking points that the sport might ride until it arrives at Daytona next month.
SO Kyle Busch handed everyone a NASCAR argument that never went away, but never grew old, even like the drivers who debate it.
Young people against old people.
On Tuesday, Busch, now 32, was asked about the sport’s willingness to promote its young talent, by far the largest group of young talent to come forward in one fell swoop in NASCAR’s 70-year history. When the green flag flies at the Great American Race, the field is guaranteed to contain a half-dozen full-time Cup Series drivers under the age of 25, all behind the wheel of extremely prestigious machines. Darrell Wallace Jr., Erik Jones, Ryan Blaney, William Byron, Alex Bowman And Chase Elliott will drive cars lined up by Richard PetitJoe Gibbs, Roger Penske and Rick Hendrick.
These kids are hosting podcasts, taking over social media, and making appearances in Hollywood blockbusters, steered toward these opportunities largely by NASCAR itself.
Busch was not happy.
“All you’re doing is advertising all these young guys so fans can discover them and spot them and choose them as their favorite driver…I think it’s stupid. I don’t know; I’m not the marketing genius behind this deal.”
He is also not the genius behind the following deals…
In 2005 he arrived in the Cup series with much fanfare, partly because his big brother had just won the championship, but largely won on his own. He had rewritten NASCAR’s minimum age rules when he was a teenager in the truck series. He had won the Xfinity Series Rookie of the Year (then Busch) and took his place alongside Jeff Gordon, Terry Labonté and another young person Brian Vickers at Hendrick Motorsports. When he won at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in a Lowe’s-backed car, his image was projected throughout the Charlotte area on billboards to promote the track’s events. And in 2006, when A&E launched a television series about future auto racing superstars, Busch not only had his own episode of the series, but he was also featured on the promotional posters and DVD cover.
This show took place right in the middle of an era when the Gillette Young Guns, a group of young drivers, were the centerpiece of a massive, multi-year advertising campaign. Ultimately, Busch was on that list. Remember “Countdown to E-Day,” which took us all the way to Dale Earnhardt Jr. Cup debut? It was 20 years ago. At the same time, the covers of every publication, from ESPN The Magazine to TV Guide, featured newly arrived runners.
The fact is that this is not new. It’s as old as the Circle of Life, although that circle is shaped like a 2.4 km tri-oval.
The pioneers of NASCAR didn’t much like being invaded by young whippersnappers Richard Petty and David Pearson. Pearson and Petty weren’t big fans of losing sections of the stands to Dale Earnhardt and Rusty Wallace. Rusty and Dale weren’t too thrilled about wasting TV time on the Young Guns…unless those guns were their sons.
See? Not new.
Busch, sounding exactly like all those other champions just mentioned, went on to say he feared it was too much, too soon for a bunch of youngsters who had yet to win a race at NASCAR’s highest level. He talked about paying dues. He talked about earning respect. He talked about… well, the same things that drivers always talk about the day they wake up and see that their name now has the word “veteran” in front of it.
The day you look in the rearview mirror, you suddenly see lots of very young faces and one very old one. Father Time’s evil smile.
“Remember the ‘young guns’ movement? I was one of those guys, and the emphasis was on that word,” Jeff Gordon said last fall, on the eve of the 2017 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, reflecting on his full-time farewell race a year earlier. “One day you’re the kid all the old people are complaining about. Then, overnight, you’re the old guy saying, ‘You kids, get out of my way!’
Gordon was nice. He wasn’t just part of this movement; he was the instigator. He arrived in 1992 at the age of 21, when the peloton was mostly made up of forty-year-olds, and two years later he was kicking their butts. Sponsors – and yes, NASCAR – couldn’t move fast enough to leverage the kid to sell races to new markets and demographics. As one Fortune 500 executive told me in 1998, “He’s not old and scary; he’s young and cool.”
As you can imagine, the old and scary group didn’t care much for this feeling, especially when they were being kicked off the rides by owners desperate to find “the next Jeff Gordon.” For each Tony Stewart And Kasey Kahne there was a Ron Barfield And Casey Atwood.
People were angry. That A&E series? This prompted screaming phone calls from a few future NASCAR Hall of Famers wanting to know why they weren’t getting their own television specials. I know, because I worked on those shows and had to hold the phone away from my ear when the screaming started. Those magazine stories? They sparked multiple impassioned lectures behind the tire pile from other veterans, wanting to know “What the hell did that little (white) brat do to get him and his sponsor five pages in your magazine?! I won the Daytona 500 (blank cover)!” I know because I was the one who had to wipe the burning spittle from my eyelids.
At the time, I told this story to Busch, the subject of both the TV show and the magazine article. He only smiled and said, “Hard (empty).” » After all, he knows perfectly well the advantages of recruiting and promoting young talents. As a truck team owner since 2010, he has employed a line of young people, including three of the 20 guys he will race against at Daytona: Wallace, Byron and Jones.
In fairness, Busch’s speech Tuesday wasn’t all poison darts. Before concluding, he added: “I just do what I can do, and my part is what it is.”
Talking to people at Toyota, its role in their marketing plan is pretty huge. Talking to people about NASCAR, it’s the same. The “marketing genius behind this deal” is Steve Phelps, executive vice president and chief global sales and marketing officer for NASCAR. He came to NASCAR from the NFL in 2005, just as Busch was gaining momentum in Cup racing. On Wednesday, he admitted that the sanctioning body had not done enough in the past to promote drivers, young or old, instead leaving it to teams and sponsors.
But Phelps also confirmed what his staff had told me earlier in the day, that Busch was indeed on the list of stars they would lean on as part of their aggressive promotional plans for 2018. It’s a cross-generational list. And the guys on it should already know they’re there. What they choose to do with it is up to them.
“I feel like if some drivers were more willing to do these things, they would be asked to do it more,” Blaney said when asked about Busch’s comments. “And the reason I get asked to do it a lot is because I say yes a lot, because I think it’s good for the sport and for myself. I can tell you personally, (Busch) doesn’t like to do a lot of things, so they don’t ask him. … It kind of pissed me off, the way he criticized that part. But, to each his own. If he doesn’t want to do anything, so be it.”
Coincidentally, this weekend I watched the heist movie “Logan Lucky.” Guess who is among the large group of NASCAR veterans making appearances alongside the youngsters, led by Blaney?
Yeah. Kyle Busch.
Hey, maybe we should give him a break. He gave us something to talk about during a bland media tour.
And maybe everything he did and was asked to do just got out of hand. Forgetting things is what happens when you start to get old.
