On Sunday NASCAR saw a weekend sweep with each of their national series having first-time winners. In the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Kyle Larson’s win might have been the most impressive.
Kyle Larson won his first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race on Sunday in Michigan at the age of 24-years-old. Winning your first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race is a big deal all on its own but Larson winning at his age makes the feat all the more impressive.
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is not usually a spot in which young drivers thrive. In fact, over the course of NASCAR history, drivers under the age of 25 have not found a lot of success in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Over the last 2,485 Cup Series races, only 73 of those events have been won by a driver under the age of 25.
For those of you not quick with that math, that’s less than three percent of the last almost 3,000 races.
What’s more impressive is that Larson enjoys an even smaller company than most might think. Of those 73 wins by drivers under the age of 25, 60 of those wins are between six drivers.
- Kyle Busch – 17
Jeff Gordon – 15
Joey Logano – 9
Kurt Busch – 7
Richard Petty – 7
Junior Johnson – 5
The other 13 wins on the list? Well those wins belong to 13 different drivers who each won once before turning 25, now including Kyle Larson.
- Trevor Bayne
Chris Buescher
Bob Burdick
Bobby Hillin Jr.
Parnelli Jones
John Kieper
Terry Labonte
Ryan Newman
Bill Rexford
Fireball Roberts
Donald Thomas
Brian Vickers
It might be easy for a NASCAR fan to say that drivers under the age of 25 don’t win because not many of them run in the Cup Series each week and the one’s that do aren’t very good. While that is one thing that someone could say, they would not necessarily be correct.
On average the 2016 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series has had anywhere from five to eight drivers under the age of 25 run in races this season. So that’s anywhere from 12 to 20 percent of the 40-car field. Previously when NASCAR had a 43-car field, that number would tend to be a little bit higher.
Winning before you turn 25 in NASCAR truly is an accomplishment. Of the names above you see a lot of NASCAR champions, Hall of Famers and future Hall of Famers. On the list above there are also plenty of names that you don’t see.
Brad Keselowski, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Carl Edwards, Denny Hamlin and Kasey Kahne are all driver with a bunch of NASCAR wins who broke into the Cup Series before the age of 25 and none of them were able to add their names to the list that Larson did on Sunday. Going back into NASCAR history, the number of drivers who competed in NASCAR’s top series before the age of 25 and did not win only continues to grow.
This is by no means a slight on those drivers but instead it’s a nod to Larson and the 18 others that join him on the above list. Is this a trend that is going to continue? Larson has a little more time before he turns 25 so he could add another win himself. Then you have drivers like Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney who haven’t won yet and have been in position to do so this season. Looking ahead in NASCAR are young drivers like Erik Jones who will debut in 2017 and Daniel Suarez, Ty Dillon and William Byron who will be coming full-time further down the road.
Then again, who is to say that they will join the list of only 19 drivers in NASCAR history who have won before the age of 25. Winning is hard in NASCAR, plain and simple. Heck, if winning was easy you would have 50 or 60 cars at qualifying each week trying to earn a spot on the starting grid.
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Larson’s win on Sunday will forever be special for him as it was his first. Larson’s win on Sunday is also special because of the elite club that it puts him in with 18 other drivers who were able to win at the highest level of competition that NASCAR has to offer.