Chase Elliott to Lead Next Wave of Hendrick Stars After Replacing Jeff Gordon

When Jeff Gordon announced that 2015 would be his final season in Sprint Cup competition, it was quite clear it would take a special driver to try to fill Gordon’s shoes.

On Thursday, the NASCAR world found out just how special that driver would be when team owner Rick Hendrick made it official: Budding superstar and reigning Xfinity Series champion Chase Elliott will replace Gordon in the No. 24 Chevrolet in 2016.

It’s not necessarily a surprising move. After all, Elliott, 19, won last season’s final Nationwide Series championship—becoming the youngest series champion in NASCAR history—in just his first season in NASCAR’s junior league.

And it’s not a complete surprise either. Elliott had been in the Hendrick Motorsports/JR Motorsports pipeline for the last three years back when he was a 15-year-old racing in the K&N Pro Series East.

While Chase, son of NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott (who was inducted Friday evening), is a worthy replacement for Gordon, it also brings about an interesting question.

Who’s next to leave at Hendrick Motorsports?

Elliott is the start of what will be an eventual complete changing of the guard—the next generation of Hendrick Motorsports drivers, if you will—over the next decade more or less.

He also becomes the standard against whom other potential replacements for the rest of the current HMS roster will be judged against. With an organization that has won 11 Sprint Cup championships, mediocrity will not be tolerated.

If team owner Rick Hendrick could clone Elliott three more times, he’d have the perfect stable of replacements for his current drivers.

But since that’s not possible, you better believe HMS will be looking for the cream of the crop of young and up-and-coming race car drivers.

In fact, HMS officials are probably already acting like an NFL team going into draft day, compiling a long list of potential superstars in the making.

Which leads us back to the question we posed a few moments ago: Who’s next to leave HMS due to age?

No race car driver is infallible. Sooner or later, Father Time catches up with him. Even Mark Martin, who raced until he was 54, eventually hung up his fire suit.

At 43, Gordon’s departure has begun the inevitable game of musical chairs at HMS. In the next five to 10 years, we’re likely to see most if not all of the other three current HMS drivers hang up their fire suits for one last time.

And then who replaces them? Will it be someone currently in the Xfinity or Camping World Truck Series? Will it be someone who may not even be in his or her teens yet? Will it be the offspring of another NASCAR Hall of Famer?

Dale Earnhardt Jr. will be 41 later this year. If he were to finally win that elusive first Sprint Cup championship, the odds of him retiring and going out on top grow exponentially.

But even if Junior never wins a Cup crown—and even though he said on NASCAR's media tour he’s not even thinking about retirement just yet—it’s hard to imagine he’ll race until the age his father was (just two months away from turning 50), when he was tragically killed in a last-lap crash in the 2001 Daytona 500.

What happens if and when Earnhardt gets married and starts having his own family? Or, what happens if, God forbid, Junior develops a physical condition that may limit some of his ability to muscle a 3,600-pound Sprint Cup car on tracks from Watkins Glen to Fontana to Daytona?

What he says he wants or can do today may be totally opposite from reality five or 10 years from now, if not sooner.

And who potentially replaces Earnhardt? One of his own current or former drivers at JR Motorsports such as Regan Smith (31 years old), Alex Bowman (21), Brad Sweet (29), Austin Theriault (21) or the team’s latest addition for 2015—marking JRM’s first foray into the Camping World Truck Series—17-year-old Cole Custer.

During Thursday’s final day of the NASCAR media tour, Earnhardt referenced one of the reasons Gordon is retiring after 2015 is because of physical issues (a bad back primarily) as well as he wants to spend more time with his growing family.

"Jeff made his decision based on factors in his life, whether it be his health or his kids," Earnhardt said, according to USA Today's Jeff Gluck. "... I don't have any back issues and I don't have any kids on the way. I don't have any factors."

Still, Junior is sticking to what was now formerly Gordon’s line: that he still has a lot more years of racing ahead of him.

"I didn't even know I could have this much fun," Earnhardt told USA Today. "Last year, I felt like a kid. I had the same feeling I had when I would drive down to Myrtle Beach with my Late Model. We were just on top of the world having so much fun. That freedom came back in the last couple years to just enjoy it and just release the pressure. So that's made me really think I can do this a lot longer."

The next guy in line in the Hendrick age chart is also the same member of the current driver lineup who could potentially stay at HMS the longest. According to ESPN.com's Doug Williams, six-time champion Jimmie Johnson is already doing triathlons, with an eye on eventually doing a half or full Ironman competition.

Even though he’ll turn 40 on Sept. 17, Johnson is in such great shape—arguably the best shape he’s ever been in his life—that he likely WILL race for another 10 years, both in a race car and in his running shoes—and perhaps even longer.

Frankly, Johnson has the potential to become his generation’s Mark Martin.

But let’s face it—no matter how hard JJ works at slowing down Father Time, just one bad accident and a potential resulting injury could drastically alter his long-term plan of remaining behind the wheel of the No. 48 Chevrolet.

The youngest member of the HMS driver quartet is Kasey Kahne, who turns 35 on April 10. Kahne is arguably the driver who can outlast all of his present HMS teammates.

We see Kahne racing for 10 more years tops, eventually wanting to own his own Sprint Cup, Xfinity or Camping World Truck Series team. After all, Kahne already owns three sprint car teams.

But there’s an interesting dichotomy here. If Johnson and Kahne do stick around for another 10-plus years, they’ll become mentors to not only Elliott, but any other young driver who comes along as JJ’s and KK’s eventual replacements.

And by that time, Elliott will become a mentor to the next generation of HMS drivers as well. Who knows how many Sprint Cup championships he’ll have by then? He could potentially become a mirror image of Gordon’s career.

Any way you slice it, the Hendrick Motorsports we know today will likely look vastly if not completely different 10 years from now—and maybe even sooner—than it does now.

Pop quiz: What do Jeff Gordon’s retirement and London’s Buckingham Palace both have in common?

Answer: Let the changing of the guard begin.

Follow me on Twitter @JerryBonkowski.