The Next 9 Represent Sport’s Future - Speedway Digest

It started when Joey Logano became the youngest winner in NASCAR Nationwide Series history and Joe Gibbs Racing tabbed him to fill the No. 20 Home Depot Toyota vacated by two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Tony Stewart. It continued when Austin Dillon drove the famed black No. 3 to wins in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series at Iowa and Las Vegas. And it reached a crescendo when Trevor Bayne returned the Woods Brothers to Victory Lane with an improbable — and inspirational — win at the 2011 Daytona 500.

It’s led to the inevitable questions: Where are all these talented young drivers coming from? And, who’s next?

The answer is the NASCAR K&N Pro Series. Whether it’s current NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship points leader, rookie Cole Whitt, or action sports stars looking to transition to stock cars, like Travis Pastrana and Ricky Carmichael, the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East and West have become the launching pad for drivers looking to break their way into one of NASCAR’s three national series.

Whether it’s learning when to be patient and when to make your move on one of the bullrings the series visits or the seat time at national series tracks like Phoenix, New Hampshire and Dover, the NASCAR K&N Pro Series has become a proving ground for the next generation of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers.

“It’s the patience, the close-quartered racing, and pushing these guys around,” said Bayne, after the Daytona 500 win, of his series experience. “I never thought I’d be a superspeedway racer just because short tracks were my niche. But man, it really does relate to everything we were doing here today.”

The NASCAR K&N Pro Series is coming off one of its biggest events of the year, the annual combination race between the East and West at Iowa Speedway. They now head their separate ways — the East will travel to history Bowman Gray Stadium in Winston-Salem, N.C., on June 4, while the West makes a stop at The Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on June 11.

Before they return to the track, NASCAR gathered nine of the brightest stars that are 21-and-under in Charlotte, N.C., recently to talk about where they are, where they’ve been, and where they’re going. Alex Bowman, Matt DiBenedetto, Dylan Kwasniewski, Corey LaJoie, Luis Martinez Jr., Brett Moffitt, Sergio Peña, Daniel Suárez, and Darrell Wallace Jr. are just the tip of the iceberg of the next wave of talented young drivers competing in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series today, with an eye at becoming a star on the big stage tomorrow.