A few graphs I made for my NBC Sports article on young drivers and then opted not to use.
Age Distribution of the Field 1980-present
This is one of those graphs I found really useful in trying to understand what was going on. But I knew it didn’t tell the story very clearly. I put a dot for each driver’s age at the start of that year’s season. I added lines to highlight some of the drivers.
Focus on Kevin Harvick. Look how many drivers were close to him in age in 2006. In 2022, it’s just him in his age range. One good thing for Harvick this weekend at COTA: Not only is he younger than Boris Said, he’s younger than Andy Lally.
You can see the youth waves by focusing in on the swathe from 20-25 left to right. There was no one under 25 running from 1990-1992, but look how many there are now! Jeff Gordon was practically the youth movement by himself for awhile there.
Percent of Young Drivers Who Win Races
The next one is the percentage of drivers under age 30 who win races — and that’s relative to the total number of drivers under 30.
While five under-30 pilots have won 100% of the races in 2022, there are 20 drivers under 30. So while we have a lot more young men behind the steering wheel, we don’t have a lot more young winners.
The peak of this graph comes in 2002, when the ‘young guns’ were Matt Kenseth, Kurt Busch, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick, Ryan Newman, and Jamie McMurray, all of whom races that year. We’re only five races into 2022, so there’s room for the young’uns to make some progress there. Not everyone wins in their first season.
Percentage of Older Drivers Who Win Races
And since I did it for the younger drivers, I thought I should do it for the older drivers.
The last two years — two years where we had the biggest percentage of under-30 drivers — almost 70% of the full-time drivers over age 30 won races. Of course, Team Old Guys is standing at 0% for 2022, but I suspect that will change in pretty short order.
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