Matt Kenseth, Ryan Newman, Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Kurt Busch show off the latest fashions in Men's Journal. Credit: Carlos Serrao

'Young Guns' reinventing the sport of NASCAR

The September 2004 issue of Men's Journal is on newsstands now

Men's Journal celebrates the new golden age of style and design. At the very moment when technology is transforming our physical world into an increasingly virtual one, America is experiencing an explosion of well-designed products.

ALSO •   Gillette Young Guns Challenge

There is a paradox in American design right now: Never have we produced so many conspicuously good-looking objects, but at the same time, never has more of our life -- our wealth, work, information, even sexual stimuli -- existed in a realm where there are no material products at all, just images or blips of electronic code. The less the physical world has come to contain our lives, the better-looking we have made it -- perhaps just to remind us that it's still there.

Fast Company, By Leigh Montville | Page 124

Matt Kenseth, Jimmie Johnson, Ryan Newman, Kurt Busch, Kevin Harvick, and Dale Earnhardt Jr.: They're the young guns of NASCAR, and they're reinventing the sport.

For most of NASCAR's 56-year history, the opportunity to scare yourself silly in the fastest stock cars available was pretty much restricted to a small group of aging country boys, some of whom were direct descendants of the old moonshine runners who evaded IRS agents on the backroads of Georgia and the Carolinas. NASCAR was the country music of American professional sports, a regional phenomenon filled with weathered characters, slow drawls, and honky-tonk mischief.

The six drivers featured in this story -- part of Gillette's Young Guns Challenge, which will give away $5 million at the end of the season if they all finish in the top six and a fan correctly picks their final order -- are all under 32 and grew up in places like Wisconsin and Indiana and California.

"One of the hardest parts of my job is the travel schedule and the obligations," Johnson said. "You really can't have a personal life. Burnout hits earlier and earlier."

"It doesn't bother me that I'll be compared to my Daddy all my life," Earnhardt Jr. told Men's Journal. "He taught me to be a man."

To read the entire article, as well as view additional pictures, pick up the September 2004 issue of Men's Journal, available on newsstands now.

Copyright 2004 Men's Journal. All rights reserved. Excerpts reprinted with permission.