Developing the next generation of drivers for NASCAR's national series never ends.

And while many aspects of the process are no different than they were 25 years ago, the current era has also brought changes -- and finances are at the root of most of them.

"Obviously we're all fighting the same thing when it comes to developing talent -- the economics of it," multiple team owner Tommy Baldwin said. "It's a shame, because there's a lot of talented young kids out there that will eventually get in this [Sprint Cup] series, and you just have to try to hold on to your plan as long as you possibly can so you can hopefully give these kids a chance."

The Sprint Cup Series is so lucrative for many of its participants, that it leads more young competitors -- as well as their parents -- to strive for the goal of reaching NASCAR's highest level.

K&N Pro Series East director Kip Childress said he's seen an influx of young drivers coming through the series in recent years, including Joey Logano and Trevor Bayne.

"With Alex Bowman and Corey LaJoie racing with us for the full season, Matt DiBenedetto and Daniel Suarez, who races in our NASCAR Mexico Series from X Team Racing and with Brett Moffitt and Max Gresham who are development drivers for Michael Waltrip and Joe Gibbs, respectively, leading our points -- those are going to be names you're going to see down the road, I'm sure of it.," Childress said.

Childress is also in the middle of another aspect of development that will no doubt make it even more competitive.

"I met Geraldo Rodrigues, the owner of X Team, this weekend [at New Hampshire] and he's interested in bringing drivers from Brazil and Mexico and Latin America over and getting them started with us and moving them right through the ranks," Childress said. "So that's another avenue of development."

But it doesn't make the path any clearer.

When the timing is right

Logano raced a classic development path engineered entirely by his family. While racing Legends cars as an early teenager, Logano met NASCAR veteran Mark Martin when he raced against Martin's son, Matt. That marked one of the most important turns in Logano's career.

"Connecting with Mark Martin was one of the biggest things -- if not the biggest thing -- that ever could have happened to have someone behind me," Logano said. "You know how much he's respected in the garage, and when he says something, people listen."

Logano said "it all took off so quick" after he won a Hooters Pro Cup race as a 15-year-old. Logano said Martin was singing his praises before Logano even knew how much the NASCAR veteran thought of him.

And now Logano finds himself a target of a bunch of aspiring drivers whom he hangs out with. Unfortunately, he can't hand them a carbon-copied map to racing success.

"It's harder than it's ever been, I promise you that," Logano said. "It's harder than it's ever been just to get an opportunity to get in a Cup car -- forget about a Nationwide car.

"I don't know that you could have all I had behind me, and still make it happen, now."

Logano knows just how important timing was to his career.

"I was fortunate enough that when I was 15, Joe Gibbs Racing signed me," Logano said. "That just doesn't happen for anyone any more, unless you bring money. That's straight-up, it doesn't matter which team you're going to -- these guys are bringing money to drive race cars.

"I don't want to say I got lucky because I won the right races and I had the right people behind me that helped me and I was fortunate that it all worked out right and the timing was right."

The current reality hits Logano, hard, almost every day.

"I see my friends now -- I look at Corey LaJoie and Coleman Pressley -- these kids are good and they have a legit shot at making it," Logano said. "They're good enough to learn a lot and become better race car drivers. But will they ever get the opportunity?

"Unless you have a big paycheck behind you, it doesn't seem like you're getting a ride. I feel bad for them, because it's so expensive if you're running Late Models on your own, or East cars on your own. Eventually you've got to get a real job, because you can only spend money for so long in this sport."

A couple of development drivers have reached that crossroad.

Building a financial future

Paulie Harraka appeared on the NASCAR landscape about five years ago as a member of the Drive for Diversity program and the 22-year-old quickly became one of its shining stars after winning a rookie of the year title and the Whelen All-American Series Late Model championship.

Harraka moved to full time in 2009 with team owner Bill McAnally into what is now the K&N Pro Series West. During the past two seasons, Harraka has three wins and 15 top-10 finishes in 25 starts and finished fourth and third in the championship.

Despite his success, Harraka's young career hit a critical point as the economy worsened.

"A lot of independent Truck and Nationwide teams shut down and a lot of the Cup-affiliated Truck and Nationwide teams put Cup drivers in their seats; they shut down their development programs.

"The problem now, is a lot of drivers are coming with money," Harraka said." Five years ago, I thought if I won a championship in a Late Model, I'd get a shot in a West car; and if I win in that, I'll get a shot in a Truck -- where I knew I could win. You keep climbing the ladder based on talent, and ability."

For Harraka, the classic ladder system ended a few rungs short of where he thought it might, so he had to improvise.

"I did the ladder for the first couple steps, and now I'm at the step of getting into a national series and winning isn't enough," Harraka said of his decision not to continue in the West Series, but rather to finish his college education at Duke University.

"Logically, the decision [to step back] was simple," Harraka said. "But as a racer it was tough, because I'd raced full-time, every year since I was seven years old. I'd never gone a year without winning a race, in something, somewhere. It's a part of me and to not be doing that full-time, sucks.

"It's counter-intuitive for a professional athlete to think, 'I need to take a year off to move up.' That doesn't make sense, but given the circumstances, it does. But it didn't make it easy."

This season, instead of watching race tapes and taking notes to share with his crew chief, Harraka is working on business plans and presentations for potential sponsors and partners.

"Now the five-year plan is to run the Truck Series next year, for sure -- to get the money together to get a good enough team that I can go win races," Harraka said. "I don't want to do it halfway; I want to show what I'm capable of inside a race car. I want to do another season in Trucks after that, and then hopefully be able to do Nationwide or Cup the following year."

Harraka said he's befriended Carl Edwards and five-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson, who arranged a meeting for him with team owner, Rick Hendrick.

"I think they look at me and say 'this kid's working his ass off,'" Harraka said. "I worked in the engineering department at Joe Gibbs Racing for year, I worked in NASCAR's corporate marketing office for a summer, I'm going to graduate from Duke on time.

"Jimmie and I talked at Indy this year, and he looked at me and said 'man, you're doing all the right things, it's just so much harder now,'" Harraka said. "I think they appreciate that I'm doing just like Jimmie did and working to win and just like Carl did, I'm handing out business cards. I think they appreciate that I'm not sitting back waiting for somebody to hand me an opportunity -- I'm being proactive and trying to make it happen."

But there's never any guarantee that will be enough. Despite getting close to J.D. Gibbs, Harraka said that when he asked the Joe Gibbs Racing president about putting him in a Nationwide car, Gibbs plainly told him, "we just need money, and I'd love to do it."

Until that happens, there's at least one driver who successfully traveled the development path who thinks Harraka is on the right track.

"It's huge," Logano said of the connections Harraka has been able to make. "The support and backing [of other drivers] will happen if you have that much talent. The money -- that's a whole different story.

"If someone's gonna give you a check for a couple million dollars or you're gonna spend a couple million to run some kid -- I tell you what, I'm taking the money."

Harraka realizes that, in this economy, cash is often what gets you in the door.

"I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I've got the ability and even more so the work ethic and the drive and the motivation; to win," Harraka said. "And I know that I've got the relationships to get in good equipment -- the challenging part if getting the money to do it with."

Racing to a dream

Like Harraka, Bobby Santos III has found that winning -- in his case both multiple races and championships -- isn't enough.

Santos, 25, is one of a couple drivers on Baldwin's development list.

"It's been tough in today's economy, but it's been a lot of fun," said Santos, who started his career driving a kart in his yard with his racing father, Bobby Santos Jr. "Racing's been really good to me and I've had a lot of great people helping me, and I think that's one of the big things -- you've got to have great people helping you."

Santos said Baldwin's had the greatest impact on his career, assisting him with his ARCA Racing Series and Nationwide outings. Santos often speaks to Tony Stewart, who Santos says is "mentally supportive." And he drove for Carl Edwards, gaining Edwards' first USAC Silver Crown Series win as an owner.

"If the economy was better," Santos said. "There are a lot more people on that level that could be helping me. Finances are absolutely the biggest challenge and my family just doesn't have it."

Baldwin says his group has exerted a lot of effort with Santos on media training in order to make him a more positive representative -- both of himself as well as his team and sponsors.

Santos won the 2010 Whelen Modified Tour championship for NASCAR's oldest division and this season, Santos won two of five USAC Pavement Sprint Car Championship races in a car fielded by his family.

"Our No. 1 goal, because of the relationship that we already have, is to get Bobby Santos in either a truck or Nationwide car," Baldwin said. "We all know he can do it. He's run two Nationwide races in his career and qualified fourth and sixth and was running in the top 10 both races when some lapped cars got a little jealous, I guess."

That would be the ultimate payoff for Santos, who credited his dad for wanting to drive everything and wanting to be good at everything.

"One thing that I think can help me, is that I can race a bunch of different stuff, can be competitive and win in a bunch of different divisions where a lot of young drivers specialize in one thing and do really good at that one thing, but that's what they've got," Santos said.

Santos admits he's not very good at chasing money, so he allows others to chase sponsorship while he spends his time preparing his family's pavement Midget, Sprint and Silver Crown race cars.

"In today's racing I'd be better off racing three times a year and working all summer to find money than I would be racing 75 times a year and spending three days to find money," Santos said.

The challenge of development

JGR continues to maintain one of the more active development programs in the sport and Gibbs says their is reason for their success with young drivers.

"We've had a lot of great drivers come through [our development program] -- we've got Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, and it just kind of clicked," Gibbs said. "Tony [Stewart] had no [stock car] experience until we got him in the Nationwide stuff. So we've got a little bit of history and we had some drivers come through who didn't quite click, and make it.

"The reality of it is, you have to do well, quickly. And then the hard part is, we do Nationwide now, which works out perfect for us because you can have the Cup guys fill the majority of the races, though they're not gonna run all of 'em; and then you get the young guys in there at a lesser rate -- because you won't get the same amount of [sponsorship] dollars for the younger guys -- but it's a good fit, from our standpoint [and] we've got a lot of good, young guys coming up."

Gresham, from Griffin, Ga., perfectly fits the mold Gibbs is seeking. Gresham has a 21-point lead in the K&N Pro Series East and is poised to wrap up the championship this weekend at Dover.

"It definitely helps with selling sponsorship," Gibbs said of having champions in the fold. "If you win that stuff it's a good [gauge of your talent]. Joey [Logano] won [an East championship] without much experience at all and that definitely said he'd arrived. It's definitely a good series."

Gibbs said Drive for Diversity development driver Wallace Jr., who's competing this year in K&N East, also may run some 2012 Nationwide races in JGR equipment. Ryan Truex, another prospect with two consecutive East Series championships, has a limited program of Nationwide races with JGR this season.

"We probably have all [the development talent] we want right now," Gibbs said. "Because you can only do so many, develop so many guys because it takes a while."

Strong support is something Baldwin, Blaney, Gibbs and others say is at the forefront of a development program. But even with a host of good, young driver, Baldwin said finding a true developmental phenomenon isn't as common as people might think.

"If you look back in history, one of these drivers comes along every five, seven years, maybe; with a sponsor coming along with them or a sponsor allowing them to do it," Baldwin said. "When the timing's right, you saw Jeff Gordon do it with DuPont, Jimmie Johnson did it with Lowe's and Tony Stewart did it with the Home Depot -- and then Joey Logano came along.

"Unfortunately, right now there's a lot of senior drivers that don't have money for next year, so it's all part of it."

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