Nate Ryan and Dustin Long are two of my favorite racing reporters. Their “quick-take” analysis of the contretemps between Matt Kenseth and Joey Logano is an excellent examination in short form about the causes and effects of not just Matt Kenseth’s punishment, but also what led to it.

I sent a direct message on Twitter to Nate about his side of the story, and — as usually happens when we are both in the mood to share deep thoughts on racing issues — it turned into an epic back-and-forth discussion about the greater zeitgeist of NASCAR’s generational shift. Without sharing the whole discussion, I wanted to highlight a few points that we hashed out that I think will help people get a better context and understanding of what has gone down over the past three weeks.

There is a generational rift in NASCAR, and it is not unprecedented

Nate and I are both Generation-Xers, and one thing we agree on is that much of what has been stereotypically presented to us as the “Millennial mindset” runs counter to our philosophies and experience (no matter how biased our own perceptions are of what that theoretical mindset may be).

With that said, neither of us begrudge Joey Logano or, indeed, his equally brash teammate Brad Keselowski for establishing themselves as outsiders to NASCAR’s status quo. While it is true that today’s “young gun” racers are hitting the big time earlier than anyone ever has before — and, consequently, lack the maturation processes and influences of experience and peer interaction that previous generations went through — that in and of itself does not preclude them from becoming an independent voice from the establishment.

Logano and Keselowski occupy the same space as Darrell Waltrip once did and do so with the same lack of the “required” obeisance to the sage wisdom of veteran racers that gave Waltrip the nickname “Jaws.” When Jeff Gordon and other drivers speak about Logano “gloating” and a failure to show respect after the events at Kansas Speedway, it is nearly a word-for-word echo of what Bobby Allison and Richard Petty said about Waltrip when the Kentuckian crashed brazenly into their self-constructed shrine to their own importance.

The context becomes even more ironic when you consider that Gordon himself in 1993 was the brash young racer who threatened the “word of the prophets” — the veteran star drivers who had appointed themselves the arbiters of policy for the garage, which included Dale Earnhardt, Sr., and (in another irony) Waltrip himself, who at that point had exchanged his brashness for a less aggressive but certainly more self-congratulatory outspokenness.

Deference is what the older generation of drivers is looking for, although they couch that desire in the more palatable and publicly-consumable word “respect.” And if the older drivers do not get the deference they are looking for, you will be sure to hear about it.

Neither Logano nor Keselowski are required by any law — written or otherwise — to show that deference. Nate correctly pointed out to me that expecting that sort of fealty is a form of entitlement that is as bad as — or worse than — the entitlement we attribute to millennials. In fact, Logano’s assertion after Kansas about racing the way he was going to race, in its own way, was as much a statement against Kenseth’s expectation that Kenseth should be allowed to drive any way he wanted around Logano because of his preeminence in the pecking order as Kenseth’s actions at Martinsville were later. But more on that in a moment.

Contrary to popular opinion and marketing storylines, by the time a driver gets to the Sprint Cup level there is no apprenticeship required to the old guard. Veteran drivers attempt to establish an informal pyramid to try and keep younger drivers in line — a high-speed etiquette, if you will — but this largely has less to do with teaching younger drivers the ropes than it does with trying to keep them behind and underneath. It is an attempt to stave off the inevitable — there will always be someone younger and faster than you, and all you can do is try to find other ways to stay ahead of them.

Being liked and respected by your peers is a symptom of the middle-school ethos of the motorhome lot (or, as Nate more colorfully and awesomely put it, “the bizarro Peyton Place of overpriced Prevosts”). But when it comes down to the brass tacks of professional sporting competition, those concerns are a long way down the list of things that should matter.

We don’t have to like each other, but we need to trust each other

Having established that it is natural for a generation gap to cause a lack of understanding and respect between peer groups, and moreover that said lack is not crucial to — and indeed, often incentivizes — the marketing and execution of professional motorsports, there is a very definite repercussion from Kansas that goes beyond simple respect and friendliness.

This is a topic that Ricky Craven brought up in his post-Martinsville comments on ESPN and one that digs deeper into the core of a racing driver’s most basic philosophy — the fact that, even when you are on the track with your most hated rival, there needs to exist a fundamental level of trust.

Going back to the “old guard’s” response to Logano’s Kansas comments, there was certainly the sense that the veteran drivers hadn’t heard a level of deference that they wished to hear. But in between the lines, there was something more — something that many racing drivers have trouble vocalizing because they simply don’t know the right words to describe it.

Whenever a driver goes out onto the track in anger, he should not expect any preferential treatment, any deference in performance, or any latitude from his competitors. These all belie the nature of competition, and no self-respecting driver would ever seriously expect these unfair advantages (which is not to say he won’t still ask for them, but that’s another story). But what he does look for is a basic understanding between himself and his competitors — a trust that each of them is racing towards victory honestly.

While a lack of deference in Logano’s post-Kansas comments certainly was annoying, the implied lack of trust Logano exhibited worried his peers far more. “I’m not going to be your patsy” is an understandable — even commendable — sentiment, but “I’m going to do whatever I want and I don’t care how it makes you feel” is something altogether different.

This is where the story departs from the generational gap and strays into a far more primal level with race car drivers. There is nothing — nothing — worse for a racer than to be on the track with a loose cannon. At 200 miles per hour and in close quarters, your life is on the line in a disturbingly literal sense. If one of your peers shows that not only does he not back down from being intimidated, but that he feels he is entitled to ruin your day at any time he feels like it… well, that is a much larger threat than simply displacing you from the limelight. That puts your future into question in a very real fashion.

What Matt Kenseth and other veteran drivers were hoping to hear — and, in their minds, didn’t — was that Logano was willing to at least abide by the unspoken compact that there are certain very specific elements of racecraft that were sacrosanct. Logano did not like being blocked, and so he decided to end Kenseth’s day by nerfing him. Worse still, NASCAR’s subsequent “meh” to Logano’s actions told Kenseth that not only was Logano going to get away with ruining his race and jeopardizing his safety, but that the door was open for Logano to do it again given similar circumstances.

This, my friends, is why Matt Kenseth decided to take matters into his own hands at Martinsville in such a blatant fashion.

Every racer, from the moment they first take hold of a steering wheel, understands that a cardinal rule is that you do not back down to intimidation — or else you will be marked forever as a pushover. Retaliation is a hedge against carte blanche for your peers.

Kenseth, whose public persona is as placid as they come, learned this lesson very early on in the Midwestern short tracks where he embarked upon the motorsports trade. No character from Fargo could be more subtly aggressive than Kenseth has been in the course of his career.

When Kenseth decided that Logano was declaring open season on him after Kansas, it did not take long for him to conclude that his best course of action was to illustrate in the most blunt manner possible that this was not, in fact, the case. And because both Generation X and Millennials have come to eschew the more direct fisticuffs that were the resolution of choice for racers like Cale Yarborough, Tiny Lund, and Bobby Allison (Twitter wars definitely do not count as analogues), Kenseth apparently felt that on-track retribution was the way to go.

Ironically, it was Logano’s teammate Keselowski that gave Kenseth his opening by spinning Kenseth out and damaging his car to the point where a chance to win was out of the question. And with corner speeds under 100 miles per hour at the small paperclip of Martinsville, Kenseth knew he could wreck maximum havoc with minimum physical risk.

And so, in classic Days of Thunder fashion, Kenseth issued his response to Logano’s challenge. And regardless of NASCAR’s punishment, he sent a message that Logano received with crystal clarity — in the words of Kevin Harvick, “When Matt Kenseth says he’s going to do something, he does it.”

In the end, therefore, it was not thuggery or intimidation that drove Matt Kenseth to skewer Joey Logano into the Martinsville wall, nor was it a Gordie Howe-style elbow in the face to establish a pecking order. It was a resetting of the unseen scales of justice by which racers measure themselves — a message sent that the uneasy, wary trust between racers is not a thing at which to scoff.

My sincere thanks to NBC Sports’ Nate Ryan for the conversation and exchange of ideas which prompted this blog post.