One thing that NASCAR has lost from the previous era compared to the current era is that there are no longer drivers who have a celebrity status, who are household names just as drivers like Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, or Tony Stewart were. Interestingly, Stewart was recently posed with the question of why that is the way it is.
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Along with that, Stewart was also asked if NASCAR will be able to go back to the time when drivers were household names. In his response, the Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner pointed to a very specific reason as to why drivers are no longer celebrities or as well known across the country as they once were.
Tony Stewart opens up on why NASCAR no longer has household names
During a recent appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, Stewart was confronted with the subject of household names in NASCAR no longer being as prominent as they were when he was in the racecar alongside names such as Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. Stewart said, “I honestly think it’s because of how young everybody is in NASCAR. It’s like when an 18-year-old kid, when they’re trying to drive in the Truck Series as a 15-year-old, they can run at the short tracks.”
“When your mom or dad has to drive you to the race shop, it’s hard for people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. How do you rally around that? I sat there and tried to tell them, ‘When was the last time all of you went to a high school football game?’ Nobody raised their hand. Because unless your kid’s playing, you don’t go to a high school football game.”
Stewart further continued, “So why are we putting 18-year-olds in these cars and expect fans to go, ‘That’s my guy’? The kid’s just got his damn diploma. He doesn’t have life experiences. He hasn’t had sleep in anybody’s car on the side of the road because he couldn’t afford a hotel room in between two nights of racing.”
“We got 12, 14-year-old kids trying to drive Sprint Cars, I’m like, ‘What are we doing?'”
The Hall of Famer also pointed to the safety side of things, claiming that a 12-year-old racecar driver’s body is not mature, something which Brad Keselowski also pointed to recently as well.
Brad Keselowski also mirrored Tony Stewart’s point recently
In a recent interview, Brad Keselowski criticized the whole sport for reducing the age limits across the different garages. For Keselowski, this was not only a disservice to the sport and the industry but also something which hurt the kids and their abilities to develop their own lives.
“It’s significantly too low for the maturity level that you can expect of someone at those ages to be able to handle these challenges and tasks,” Keselowski said as per Autoweek. “It’s unfair to them. It ends up limiting their ability to grow as a person. I think that hurts them later in their lives.”
Having said that, Keselowski claimed its way past the time when they can take a deep dive and potentially go back to their old models, which worked better. Still, the RFK driver/owner remained hopeful that at some point, NASCAR will have to protect itself from itself and start raising the age limits.
