Having trouble wrapping your arms around who and what will be the big stories for this week’s Daytona 500? How about predicting what the 2010 NASCAR season will be like?

If you think that’s tough, try stretching your brain to imagine what NASCAR will be like in 2020.

While it might seem a little farfetched to look a decade into the future, one only has to look back at how quickly the last 10 years have flashed by to know that 2020 will be here in a heartbeat. Remember Y2K? Seems like just yesterday, doesn’t it?

That said, as NASCAR hurtles into another new decade, maybe a look forward toward 2020 isn’t that futuristic after all.

Consider the following –

At the start of the 2000 season, Dale Jarrett was the defending Cup champion, an honor earned over Bobby Labonte, Mark Martin, Tony Stewart and Jeff Burton in 1999. A quick look at the rest of the Top-20 included Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt, Rusty Wallace, Ward Burton, Mike Skinner, Jeremy Mayfield, Terry Labonte, Bobby Hamilton, Steve Park, Ken Schrader, Sterling Martin, John Andretti, Wally Dallenbach, Kenny Irwin and Jimmy Spencer.

Of this group of 20, only Martin, Gordon and Burton are still active, full-time Cup participants in competitive equipment. Of all 20, Gordon is the only one with the same team he started the decade with. Meanwhile, the Labontes are hanging on a field-fillers thanks to past champion provisionals and Andretti struggles to stay in the sport in sub-standard equipment. Skinner is the Trucks while Mayfield is in racing limbo. Park and Schrader are still racing, mostly in short-track divisions these days.

The rest – Earnhardt, Hamilton and Irwin have passed on to the superspeedway in the sky while Wallace, Dallenbach, Marlin and Spencer have retired.

The fact is most of the top stars in Cup at the beginning of this decade weren’t on then NASCAR Winston Cup tour at the start of the last. Of the Top-20 drivers in the final 1999 standings, only Martin, Gordon, Burton and Tony Stewart had began their Cup careers prior to the start of the 2000 season. Frankly, it is unlikely any of them will be taking the green flag at the start of the 2020 Cup season. Meanwhile, Biffle at 41 will probably be on the sidelines by then as will current 30-somethings Cup stars Matt Kenseth (37), Johnson (35), and Juan Pablo Montoya (35).

Assuming a current age 30 is the cutoff for those still competing in Cup in 2020, that means Kevin Harvick (34), Marcos Ambrose (33), Ryan Newman (32), Kurt Busch (31) and Clint Bowyer (31) would all be in their early to mid-40s when the next decade rolls around. It’s not a stretch to say they would still be racing, but with their financial situations secure, still trying to compete in a sport that gets younger and makes greater off-track demands by the day might not be in the cards for this group either.

So who of today’s current stars – those that finished in the Top-20 in 2009 – who has a shot at being the 2020 Cup champion?

It’s easy to start with Joey Logano. At 19, he’s got time on his side. Ditto for Kyle Busch at 24. It’s easy to forget that Brian Vickers is just 26 and should be still racing in 2020, so he’s in the mix too as are Kasey Kahne, Denny Hamlin and David Reutimann – all recently turned 30 year olds.

The rest?

Who knows?

Me?

No way. I’ll be 67 (assuming I am still around) at the start of the 2020 season.

As for now, I’ll go out on a limb and say Mark Martin is finally going to win the Daytona 500 and that Jeff Gordon will be the 2010 NASCAR Cup title in a close race over Kyle Busch. Those may turn out to be the wrong predictions, but they are a lot easier to make than those we may be looking at 10 years down the road from now.