Mike Hembree: Vegas awaits NASCAR party
NASCAR haulers parade through downtown Las Vegas in this 2008 photo.
// Mark Sluder, NASCAR Scene
Related stories: Jimmie Johnson's postseason celebrations continue with Champion's Week
COMMENTARY
LAS VEGAS – Even though the NASCAR Sprint Cup Awards Banquet and the Champion’s Week that leads to it have been moved from one Sin City to another, it isn’t likely that the biggest evening of the week will change much.
Clearly, the location will be different for Friday night’s banquet. Gone is the stately grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria. Now the champion and the pretenders will be saluted at the Wynn, one of the Vegas Strip’s newest and boldest hotel/casinos. Nothing about Las Vegas is subtle, and it’s safe to say that the awards banquet will fit nicely into that milieu.
For the first time, fans – although a limited number – will be admitted to the ceremony. Three hundred fan tickets were distributed through a variety of outlets (mostly teams and sponsors). However, the banquet presumably will not become one of those music awards-type affairs in which crowds of fans hoot and holler throughout the night and mostly make fools of themselves.
As for the evening’s activities, expect to see a lot of rich guys roaming around and across stage in penguin suits, looking entirely uncomfortable and a little starstruck by the bright lights – the same stuff we’ve seen in New York. They will make speeches in which there will be numerous sponsor references and salutes to the guys back at the shop who work tirelessly to keep things afloat.
Drivers’ wives will show up in gowns that cost the winnings from two or three races, and some of them will be fabricated so that they basically defy gravity. Sort of like a Chad Knaus race car.
Music will play. Bad jokes will be told. And, afterward, there will be drinking and dancing. And substantial mirth and frivolity.
One of the positives about this year’s banquet will be the presence of featured entertainer Frank Caliendo, a brilliant comedian whose impressions have earned him a neon top spot among the Vegas entertainment elite. Given the right freedom to perform, he could be the best comedian ever to grace the NASCAR banquet (although, admittedly, that wouldn’t be a major accomplishment).
Although the banquet is likely to evolve and become a different sort of animal over the years in Vegas, the bigger story about the move to the desert is the things that surround the Friday night event.
With a more wide-open city, one that specializes in hosting big events and splashing them across its canvas, NASCAR and its partners at Las Vegas Events can turn Champion’s Week into a rousing celebration, both public and private.
In New York City, the so-called Victory Lap, a parade of the top 10 drivers in race cars, became a dreaded nuisance to befuddled New Yorkers trying to commute to work. In Vegas, where it should be barely a passing problem for traffic, it can be a carnival. Its bright colors and loud nature should mix perfectly with the Vegas palette.
Las Vegas has one other important thing New York (despite NASCAR’s best efforts) doesn’t have – a speedway. Las Vegas Motor Speedway will host a charity event featuring drivers Wednesday, and the track should become even more involved in Champion’s Week as the Vegas experience evolves.
There probably will be some rough edges this week as Vegas receives the torch from New York and makes its first attempt at showcasing NASCAR’s best. Almost anything can become lost in this vast playground. There was little indication in the city Monday that NASCAR’s celebrants are on their way. Problems are easier to hide in an overdose of neon, however, and it seems a safe bet that most folks – particularly those who tied their wagons to champion Jimmie Johnson – will go home happy.
