Brian Vickers Diary: All-Star experience

My first experience with the Nextel All-Star Challenge was awesome, so much fun, let me tell you what! It was different, very different. There was so much excitement surrounding the actual race.

It was only the best-of-the-best, man. It's a tough race, despite being short, and it's at a tough racetrack.

I love having it at Charlotte. It's like a vacation for us as drivers and teams. They have us going all over the country as is, so it's very nice to be able to race at your home track. Most everybody lives here, the shops are here, and we can come out and race without any pressure.

BRIAN VICKERS  •  Driver Page  •  Ditech Racing Room  •  Diary: Ready for Richmond  •  Diary: Ga-ga over Augusta  •  Diary: Lovin' Atlanta  •  Diary: Learning so much from the Hendricks

Travel is what wears us all out in this sport. We all love to race. So when you can show up, have a two-day show, do a little practicing, qualify with your guys and let them show what they've got, then sleep in the next day and race the next night for 90 laps, you can't beat that.

I hope it stays here. It's nice to be with your family and friends and stay in your own bed. You come home after Richmond, hang out on the lake Sunday, then get the whole next two weeks at home. There's definitely going to be changes in the schedule, NASCAR's trying to grow the sport, but I hope they don't take the All-Star race away from Charlotte.

Speaking of changes, NASCAR made a bunch of schedule changes for next year, and I know that upsets some fans. I'm from North Carolina, I hate to see North Carolina lose a race; but for the sport to grow we need to be going to these bigger markets.

Personally, I think we need to be going to more markets once. I think LA, New York, Chicago, Texas, really big markets, maybe go twice. Charlotte, Daytona, Bristol, too. But other than that, we should be hitting the big markets once. I love Rockingham, the track, and I love racing in North Carolina.

	Vickers finished 12th in the All-Star Challenge. Credit: Autostock

But man, we go down there and the grandstands are half full. You can't blame the race fans. They've got so many options within an hour, but we need to share the sport with the rest of the country. In this area, there's Charlotte, Rockingham, Darlington, Richmond, Bristol and Martinsville. That's six tracks with two dates. Twelve races within a few hours of each other, and these close states just can't support that many by themselves.

I know fans are upset about it, but if they were that upset about they should have been filling the grandstands at the racetrack. If the fans would have come to the race, we wouldn't have lost the race.

I love it when fans get vocal about what they want -- love it. But if they really want to get NASCAR's attention on Rockingham, when word came that there was a possibility of losing that track, they should have sold it out two months in advance. That would have kept Rockingham's date. NASCAR had no choice.

It appeared to NASCAR that the fans weren't interested in that racetrack, so we aren't going back. NASCAR's isn't making these decisions against the fans. They're making them for the fans. Don't get mad at them. Go out and pack that place.

	Vickers chats with teammate Terry Labonte. Credit: Autostock

As for the All-Star race, it was a neat experience with driver's introductions, having my team with me, and all those fans down in the front. They all really enjoy experiencing that. People, including you, Marty, are discussing changing the format of the All-Star race.

I thought the format was pretty good. It was definitely very different from our normal format, and that's good. I love variety, something different. I mean, guys are having fun with it, cutting loose, taking opportunities to make big changes and run as hard as you can the entire time. That's a lot of fun.

The shortness of it, the segments, the break, it's all good, and makes for hard driving and an exciting race. Some people have questioned whether Kasey Kahne and I belonged in the field. The way I look at it, we both won races last year -- he won the Busch season finale at Homestead and I won three races and a championship -- and our teams both won last year, so I'd say we belong.

I'm a little biased because we won the Busch Series championship, but I think the Busch champion should be allowed in the race. If you want to take just driver winnings and not car owner winnings, then you need to allow the Busch champion. And our teams deserve to the be in the race. They won, so they should be in. They're all-stars.