Six-time AMS winner Bobby Labonte has been witness to NASCAR's evolution

The last time Bobby Labonte was not in a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, his future employer Richard Petty was. That alone should illustrate the gravity of Labonte's absence from Saturday's Quaker State 400 at the Kentucky Speedway. Not since the famous 1992 Hooters 500 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway has the green flag fell on a top-level stock car race without the gentlemanly Texan somewhere in the starting grid. The sport has changed so immensely in the 704 races that have passed since that today's fan would scarcely recognize it were he or she to travel back in time to the first race of Labonte's streak, the 1993 Daytona 500. There were 41 cars and drivers in the '93 500. Only two - Labonte and Jeff Gordon, both a part of that season's rookie class - remain active as full-time participants in 2013. Mark Martin still races the bulk of the schedule, though he will not be competing Saturday. Kenny Schrader, who only runs a handful of Cup races these days - opting instead to spend his time on the short tracks all across America - will be racing the No. 32 Ford he splits time in with a variety of drivers, including Bobby's brother Terry (who was in the midst of what would become a then-record 655-consecutive races streak). Michael Waltrip, now Martin's team owner, still chases checkered flags at the superspeedway races 20 years after he finished 16th at the wheel of the late Chuck Rider's Pennzoil Pontiac. Three other drivers, Kenny Wallace, Derrike Cope, and Morgan Shepherd, remain active in the second-tier Nationwide Series. The story of the other 32 drivers who took the green flag on Valentine's Day, 1993 varies widely. Of course, we have sadly had to bid farewell to five participants. Reigning Cup champion Alan Kulwicki and one of his rivals for that '92 crown, Davey Allison, would both leave us within five months. Dale Earnhardt, runner-up to Dale Jarrett that cool Daytona afternoon, lost his life in the 2001 edition of the race. Bobby Hamilton succumbed to cancer a little under 14 years after wheeling his pink Country Time Ford around the Daytona high-banks. And just a few short weeks ago, we bode farewell to Dick Trickle, last in the '93 500 after a lap-3 engine failure in his white Carolina Pottery machine. Some of the drivers in the race, including winner Dale Jarrett and Rusty Wallace (who provided perhaps the most notable moment of the race aside from its frantic finish when he flipped a dozen times on the backstretch), retired after long and successful careers. Wallace and Jarrett were both voted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame on their first ballot, and a similar honor likely awaits Georgia's favorite son, Bill Elliott (who finished 39th in the 500 with a car that resembled a geyser). Darrell Waltrip, one of the sports iconic competitors, also has been enshrined in Charlotte, and it stands to reason that Ricky Rudd, Geoff Bodine, and Harry Gant will join him. Sterling Marlin and Kyle Petty (the 1993 Daytona 500 polesitter who had a memorable - and quite heated - discussion with Bobby Hillin Jr. after a late race crash) both retired in 2008. Petty now does television for Speed TV, as do Jimmy Spencer (who ran his last race in 2005) and Phil Parsons (who spent the remainder of his career largely in the Busch Series before retiring in 2001). Wally Dallenbach, meanwhile, serves as a color commentator for TNT's coverage. Two drivers have gone on to join NASCAR in an official capacity. Brett Bodine serves as the pace car driver for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, while Chad Little is now the Director of Competition for the third-tier Camping World Truck Series. That series saw Ted Musgrave become a champion for the first time in his career, when he claimed the 2005 Truck crown after four consecutive near misses. One of the most notable participants in the 1993 Daytona 500 was Al Unser Jr, at the time the reigning Indy 500 champ. He was involved in the aforementioned accident that knocked out Petty and Hillin, demolishing his Rick Hendrick-owned Valvoline Synthetic Chevrolet. He never again competed in NASCAR. Among owners, only Hendrick, Jack Roush, Roger Penske, Richard Childress, Felix Sabates (now as a minority owner), and winning team owner Joe Gibbs (for whom Labonte would capture the 2000 Cup championship and his six Atlanta Motor Speedway wins) remain in the sport. Bill Davis, for whom Bobby Labonte competed in 1993 and '94, ended his Cup run following the 2008 season when he sold his team to Penske. Junior Johnson sold his team to Brett Bodine following the '95 season with Bodine himself exiting the sport in 2003, Kenny Bernstein's team ceased operations at the end of the '95 as well, Richard Petty's team was absorbed into what had been Gillet-Evernham Motorsports at the conclusion of 2008, Robert Yates retired from ownership that same year, and Dick Moroso, Billy Hagan, and Chuck Rider have all passed on long after the end of their participation in the sport. And what about the sponsors that funded the 41-car field? Only Interstate Batteries (Jarrett), Miller (Wallace), Budweiser (Elliott), Pennzoil (Michael Waltrip), Valvoline (Martin), McDonalds (fourth-placed Hut Stricklin), Kellogg's (Terry Labonte), Quaker State (Brett Bodine), STP (Rick Wilson, in the renumbered No. 44 car that had been Petty's famous 43 ride; the 43 returned the following year), and Atlanta-based NAPA (Jimmy Hensley) are still active as primary sponsors. Maxwell House, which adorned Labonte's car, is long gone, as is Texaco Havoline, Hooters, Western Auto, Skoal Bandit, Kodak Film, GM Goodwrench, Citgo, Raybestos Brakes, Tide, and Mello Yello, all of which were major players in NASCAR at the time. There have been plenty of other changes in the years since that '93 race. Rockingham and North Wilkesboro no longer host Cup events, Darlington and Atlanta are relegated to just one, and the sport now competes in Fort Worth, TX, Fontana, CA, Las Vegas, NV, Loudon, NH, Joliet, IL, Kansas City, KS, Sparta, KY (site of this weekend's event), and of course most notably, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Toyota has joined Chevrolet and Ford on the circuit (the Japanese automaker's rides include the No. 47 Camry that Labonte regularly drives), while the Pontiac brand has ceased to exist altogether. Dodge returned to the sport in 2001 before exiting once again at the end of the 2012 season. The cars themselves have undergone a pair of major overhauls, first in 2007 with the "Car of Tomorrow" and again this year with the new "Gen-6" automobiles that have rekindled the resemblance between street cars and stock cars. Atlanta-based UPS, Rheem, and The Home Depot join Lowe's Home Improvement, ExxonMobil, the National Guard, 3M, Mars (which had been in the sport as a primary sponsor prior to '93 before returning in 1997), FedEx, Target, and Quicken Loans as companies that now serve as primary sponsors. Labonte has seen all of this over the course of his 704-race streak, and plenty remains to be seen once he returns to the wheel of the No. 47 Toyota at Daytona next week.