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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
BYRNES: 25 Banquets Ago
This weekend’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards Ceremony marks my 25th trip to the season-ending banquet...
Steve Byrnes  |  Posted December 03, 2009   Las Vegas, NV
Steve Byrnes on SPEED. (Photo: SPEED)
This weekend’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards Ceremony marks my 25th trip to the season-ending banquet, and oh, the stories I could tell … but probably shouldn’t.

I have attended the banquet in New York City every year since 1985, my inaugural season in the sport and my most memorable banquet to-date. That year marked Darrell Waltrip’s third and final championship, an unforgettable one to me since he and I have worked together for several years now on SPEED and FOX.

But not all my recollections of the seemingly glamorous gala are all warm and fuzzy. Contrary to the manner in which television portrays it, putting on the Awards Ceremony is a monumental and backbreaking task for everyone involved, something I learned firsthand.

I was working in Charlotte for Sunbelt Video, now NASCAR Media Group, in my first year producing and co-hosting “Inside NASCAR,” at the time a syndicated program that eventually aired on TNN.

As was often the case with RJ Reynolds and its Winston brand, the company was revolutionary in marketing and promoting its NASCAR Winston Cup Series. So, beginning in 1983, RJR paid Sunbelt to air the equivalent of a live broadcast from the banquet at the iconic Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York.

(A little background – RJR/Winston hired Sunbelt to provide Cup race highlights, post-race interviews and advance material for the next race via satellite uplink to TV stations across the country – free of charge. Since only about half of the races were broadcast live, it was an avenue by which to get the sport into the local TV markets.)

The banquet broadcast wasn’t truly live but we gave stations the next-best thing. Sunbelt took four or five cameras and uplinked our signal to TV stations across the country to enable them to record any portion of the evening and accompanying interviews for their newscasts.

The most challenging and grueling task in this endeavor was that we’d leave Charlotte, drive all the equipment to New York and begin setting up at 2 a.m. – about 18 hours before the banquet began. And we dragged every last piece of gear, from cameras and cables to lights, through the kitchen at the Waldorf and on into the ballroom. Without fail, we always arrived as the chefs and hotel staff were breaking down from the previous evening’s banquet, creating quite a bottleneck in the kitchen.

Then it was off for a couple hours’ worth of sleep before Ned Jarrett and I shot our on-camera segments for that weekend’s “Inside NASCAR” from various locations in the Big Apple or the hotel. So, while we were “broadcasting” the banquet, we simultaneously were putting together the next week’s NASCAR show.

Nothing like running a TV camera and sweating in a tuxedo. While all my reflections on the banquet aren’t great, I wouldn’t trade them for anything and am honored this year to co-host with Jeff Hammond because of what this evening means not only to the sport and its competitors, but to the fans.

Relocation of the Awards Ceremony to Las Vegas holds the potential for a thrilling debut for the West Coast fans who usually don’t have this kind of access to the drivers. I applaud Sprint and NASCAR for directly involving their fans in this year’s Awards Ceremony by providing some the opportunity to attend the actual banquet. In years past at the Waldorf, throngs of spectators turned out in the hotel’s lobby and sidewalks for autographs, but they were never permitted inside the ballroom.

The Las Vegas and New York atmospheres vary greatly but I think both cities were and will be important to the sustained mystique and aura of the ceremony. Amidst my first trip to the Waldorf banquet, there was a buzz and excitement in the air the entire week and the New York media, still a bit uneducated about NASCAR at the time, turned out in high numbers. But over the years, the local media became a bit blasé about the occasion and the championship festivities lost some of their significance to the locals.

Breaking ground in 1981 in the country’s largest media market was vital to NASCAR’s growth because our presence there raised the profile of the sport with the more mainstream media and fans. But I also think this year’s Awards Ceremony in Las Vegas will accomplish the same goal in its own way, and I hope this is merely the beginning of a celebration that will become integral to the future of the sport.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel
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