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Sprint Cup
CUP: New York – Still NASCAR’s Kind Of Town
The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series' season-ending awards banquet moved from New York to Las Vegas in 2009...
Jimmie Johnson (Left) and crew chief Chad Knaus (Right) pose at New York City's Central Park during the 2008 Champion's Week celebration for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. (Photo: Getty Images)
The New York City late-summer landscape no longer is broken by the unlikely sound of Detroit thunder echoing off the skyscrapers of Midtown Manhattan.
Linked to the city for almost 30 years after locating its season-ending awards banquet here in 1981, NASCAR bolted town for the grins and glitter of Las Vegas last year, moving its Champion’s Week celebrations from one Sin City to a brighter one with wider streets and a more welcoming tableau.
The reviews of last December’s inaugural end-of-season carnival in Vegas were mostly good, and there will be a repeat this year and, presumably, for years to come. The years of elegance in the Waldorf-Astoria’s New York ballroom are but memories.
NASCAR has long coveted the attention of New York and its media, a fact that was the driving force behind the 1981 move of the awards banquet to Manhattan. The love affair was mostly one way, however. NASCAR’s Champion’s Week activities in the city garnered barely a blip on the New York media radar, even when the top 10 drivers motored through the heart of the concrete canyons on a so-called victory lap. That clogged traffic – imagine that, and the gnarled logistics of making it happen lightened sponsor wallets considerably.
In Vegas, where the streets are as wide as the imagination, champion Jimmie Johnson spun right into the heart of the fans lined along the Strip, traffic flow was barely altered and everyone was happy.
In a word, Vegas worked. There was more room to move about, to flex NASCAR’s considerable muscles, to breathe. New York City in winter had its attractions, but convenience, accessibility and joy from the locals were not among them.
Vegas, with a zillion hotel rooms to fill and slot machines hungry during a relatively down time, told NASCAR to come on down, and NASCAR did.
But NASCAR has not given up on the Manhattan media monster. It still seeks places for stock cars alongside the stock market, despite a clumsy, ill-fated attempt to build a speedway within sight of the Empire State Building.
So it was that the 12 Chase drivers assembled in the city Wednesday on the way to Loudon, N.H., and the opening round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup this weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Wednesday was Chase Media Day at the London NYC hotel, and the dozen competitors in what will be the last run of the Chase in its current format visited all afternoon with Manhattan media outlets and national media representatives with NASCAR leanings.
It is NASCAR’s way of saying, “Hey, we’re still here.”
And that offensive perhaps is needed in a town in which the Yankees are engaged in a hot pennant race and sports radio show callers remain perpetually puzzled over the Jets’ loss in their first game. Denny Hamlin isn’t exactly on the minds of workers popping into Starbucks on the way to work.
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
Linked to the city for almost 30 years after locating its season-ending awards banquet here in 1981, NASCAR bolted town for the grins and glitter of Las Vegas last year, moving its Champion’s Week celebrations from one Sin City to a brighter one with wider streets and a more welcoming tableau.
The reviews of last December’s inaugural end-of-season carnival in Vegas were mostly good, and there will be a repeat this year and, presumably, for years to come. The years of elegance in the Waldorf-Astoria’s New York ballroom are but memories.
NASCAR has long coveted the attention of New York and its media, a fact that was the driving force behind the 1981 move of the awards banquet to Manhattan. The love affair was mostly one way, however. NASCAR’s Champion’s Week activities in the city garnered barely a blip on the New York media radar, even when the top 10 drivers motored through the heart of the concrete canyons on a so-called victory lap. That clogged traffic – imagine that, and the gnarled logistics of making it happen lightened sponsor wallets considerably.
In Vegas, where the streets are as wide as the imagination, champion Jimmie Johnson spun right into the heart of the fans lined along the Strip, traffic flow was barely altered and everyone was happy.
In a word, Vegas worked. There was more room to move about, to flex NASCAR’s considerable muscles, to breathe. New York City in winter had its attractions, but convenience, accessibility and joy from the locals were not among them.
Vegas, with a zillion hotel rooms to fill and slot machines hungry during a relatively down time, told NASCAR to come on down, and NASCAR did.
But NASCAR has not given up on the Manhattan media monster. It still seeks places for stock cars alongside the stock market, despite a clumsy, ill-fated attempt to build a speedway within sight of the Empire State Building.
So it was that the 12 Chase drivers assembled in the city Wednesday on the way to Loudon, N.H., and the opening round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup this weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Wednesday was Chase Media Day at the London NYC hotel, and the dozen competitors in what will be the last run of the Chase in its current format visited all afternoon with Manhattan media outlets and national media representatives with NASCAR leanings.
It is NASCAR’s way of saying, “Hey, we’re still here.”
And that offensive perhaps is needed in a town in which the Yankees are engaged in a hot pennant race and sports radio show callers remain perpetually puzzled over the Jets’ loss in their first game. Denny Hamlin isn’t exactly on the minds of workers popping into Starbucks on the way to work.
Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEED.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.
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