It's a young man's world: to the dismay of the old guard, a group of brash young drivers are charging to the front of the Winston Cup pack

MOST OF THE TIME, NASCAR IS as deliberative and orderly as the houses of Congress. There are some verbal volleys, but civility is the rule and leadership changes don't come easy or often.

In recent years, however, an increasing number of brash youngsters have enjoyed success after being given rides in quality equipment--to the dismay of some NASCAR's veterans.

This changing of the Winston Cup guard has been in the works for a few yearn The benchmark season was 1999, when Tony Stewart won three races in the final three months of the season and finished fourth in the Winston Cup point standings. Prior to Stewart, a Cup rookie hadn't won a race in 12 years.

But no sooner had Stewart's rookie season been declared the greatest first-year performance in stock car racing history did such breakthroughs become annual occurrences. Matt Kenseth (11 top-10 finishes and a win at the Coca-Cola 600) and Dale Earnhardt Jr. (two wins) arrived the following year. And in 2001, Kevin Harvick won both the Winston Cup Series' Raybestos Rookie of the Year award, after finishing ninth in the Cup points race, and the Busch Series championship in the same season.

The revolution didn't necessarily begin with Stewart, however. It really started with the elder of NASCAR's generation. It began in 1993 with Jeff Gordon. By the standards set by Stewart, Harvick, et al., Gordon's rookie season was a bit spotty: He only finished 12th in the points and he failed to win a race. But a year later, Gordon was a race winner. Two years later, he was a Winston Cup champion.

Gordon succeeded in a kind of glorious experiment. He proved that a young driver could be placed in topflight equipment and immediately prosper. Before Gordon, with few exceptions, rookies had to "pay their dues" in NASCAR, "The young drivers today have it easier than we did," claims Gordon's teammate, Terry Labonte. "In my first Winston Cup race, I put the engine in the car and my mechanic, Darrell Bryant, came down to the shop and put four springs and four shocks in it."

Twenty-three years later, Labonte has two teammates, 31-year-old Jeff Gordon and 26-year-old Jimmie Johnson. "Could Jimmie put an engine in the car?" wonders Labonte. "Maybe he could. I know Jeff couldn't."

Ricky Rudd, a contemporary of Labonte, started his career driving cars either owned by his father, Al Rudd Sr., or by Bill Champion, a struggling independent driver-owner. Dale Earnhardt bounced around for a half-decade, making occasional starts in inferior equipment, before he found--and made the most of--a full-time ride in 1979, at the of 28. "Back then, nobody ever got the kind of opportunities that these guys are getting now," says Rudd.

That may be true, but the young guard is definitely making the best of their opportunities. Gordon stepped up to the plate in 1993. Stewart hit a home run in 1999. Now everyone under 30 has a bat in his hands.

Of this season's first 15 races, 30-yearold Matt Kenseth won three. Stewart, 31, and rookie Jimmie Johnson, 26, won two each. Kurt Busch, 23, won at Bristol Motor Speedway. Dale Earnhardt Jr., 27, won at Talladega Superspeedway. And in the height of ironies, 24-year-old Ryan Newman won the all-star race supposedly reserved for established winners, The Winston. (Newman won the No Bull Sprint to qualify for the final transfer spot in The Winston.)

By contrast, for most of the 1990s, Winston Cup's Victory Lane was reserved almost exclusively for either Gordon--who won more races before the age of 30 than anyone in series history--or one of a cast of characters in their late 30s and early 40s.

The rise of young drivers has dramatically changed stock car racing-even off the track. All of a sudden, the anarchic noise of rock & roll has replaced the simple country melodies that used to serve as the sport's de facto soundtrack. For most of the first half of the season, 45-year-old Sterling Marlin quietly led the point standings. The media, however, were primarily focused on NASCAR's youth brigade, to the resentment of some older drivers.

Further compounding the tension in the garage, the traditions and gentleman's agreements upheld by the veterans have sometimes been lost on the more impulsive and youthful newcomers. After Harvick misbehaved on track and off in a pair of Saturday races on consecutive weeks (one in the Busch Series, the other in the Craftsman Truck Series), NASCAR officials took the unprecedented step of making him sit out a Cup race. A month later, Busch received a 810,000 fine for not only shoving Robby Gordon's Chevrolet out of the way in The Winston, but later admitting that the move was intentional.

In a post-race press conference, Busch said he bumped Gordon because he needed a caution flag in order to catch the race leader, Newman. He repeated that on a syndicated radio show two nights later. NASCAR observers couldn't remember a driver ever admitting such a thing. The collective response is best summed up by radio host Don Imus' favorite phrase: "What are you, nuts?"