What's next for NASCAR Next?

O’Donnell: Potential for youth and diversity initiatives to merge

Steve O’Donnell, NASCAR’s Executive Vice President and Chief Racing Development Officer, was among the sanctioning body’s presenters during Tuesday’s debut of the NASCAR Next 2015-16 roster of young drivers. If the process for identifying new up-and-comers for driving opportunities continues to grow, the group’s composition could evolve in the years ahead.

The newest NASCAR Next class of 12 drivers — five returning members and seven first-time participants — made their grand introduction Tuesday at the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Two members — Nicole Behar and Ruben Garcia Jr. — were also participants in last fall’s NASCAR Drive for Diversity Combine, a proving ground for multicultural drivers and women hoping to make their mark in the sport.

The NASCAR Next campaign is in its fifth season; the D4D initiative has been in effect since 2004. O’Donnell said each program has momentum, but that there is potential for a merged program in the future that combines the best of both.

“I think it’s part and parcel,” O’Donnell said. “I think eventually the hope is that it could grow just to one, but I think the D4D program is still running strong, still provides us with an opportunity those who may have not been in a car at 4 and 5 years old, didn’t have that opportunity and then were able to do that through the Rev Racing program, so we’ve seen some success and we’re still seeing that.

“I think this is an opportunity to recognize some drivers who are in the Late Models and have had some success and continue to grow and we can work with them as well. So, two successful programs, but eventually we’d love to see it just be one.”

Since the Next program began under the moniker of NASCAR’s Next 9 in 2011, several notable alumni — Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson, Darrell Wallace Jr. and Alex Bowman among them — have found regular rides in one of the three NASCAR national series. O’Donnell said the movement to identify and promote the new wave of stock-car driving talent has been a collaborative effort, drawing on the recommendations of former drivers, track owners and other racing officials.

Though O’Donnell hinted at the program’s evolution, five years later the objective for NASCAR Next remains the same.

“The goal of it is to graduate a driver from the touring to the national series level,” O’Donnell said. “As we’ve seen, that’s always been a struggle of getting names out there about their talent. They’re so difficult in this day and age, so I think this has been a help to just get some drivers who may not have been recognized that, hey, let’s get an owner to take look at a driver and advance them to the next level as well.”

Among other topics O’Donnell fielded Tuesday in an open Q&A with reporters:

— On the criticisms lobbed by defending series champion Kevin Harvick last weekend, stating that the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule was “stagnant”: “We’re happy with the schedule we have. We certainly look at what’s available to us, but the scheduled that we have in place, I think that the tracks are doing a tremendous job of helping to promote the sport. Talladega was a great success for us this weekend, and we’ll roll into Kansas and Charlotte. We certainly have dialogue with Kevin and everyone’s got an opinion on the schedule, but we’re happy with where we’re at right now.”

— On why the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race won’t be run as a high-profile test of next year’s rules package: “I think we’re still developing what the 2016 package could be. It could very well be the 2015 package, so to go down a path that we felt potentially needed testing, we didn’t think was the right thing to do, and put essentially a test out there for a big race on our schedule. So we elected to stay where we’re at and continue to monitor the racing under this package right now.”

— O’Donnell also indicated that NASCAR competition officials are targeting August 1 as a deadline for settling on a 2016 rules package. He also said that he expects national series schedules to be released on a similar time frame to last year as well.