Inaugural '81 banquet was France's first leap forward (cont'd)

"I had conversations with [France] about that," added Don Miller, the outgoing president of Penske Racing. "He said, 'They may think I'm crazy, but you don't get any recognition if you do it in Charlotte. You don't get any recognition if you do it in Daytona. But if you do it in New York, and they let you do it there, and you come back, it's going to be big time.' And he was right. There were a lot of attempts, but until they came here, there was never a really legitimately nationally-covered event."

But New York wasn't exactly receptive at first. Trying to generate coverage from local media was a fruitless effort.

"We struck out," Hunter said. "I can remember going down to the New York Times' office and it was like, 'Yeah, see you later.' We were just not acceptable at that time as a sport, but I think Bill's persistence in coming back and coming back, and getting sponsors who had a big stake in our sport, enlisting their help in selling it, made it what it is today."

Now there are limos and champagne receptions, nightclub parties and newspaper coverage and a big Nextel Cup flag hanging from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. What a contrast that is to 1981. "We were all walking around, looking at the skyscrapers," Hunter remembered with a laugh. "It was like country came to town."

Country quickly grew up. The coat-and-tie dinner at Tavern on the Green became a formal banquet, first at the Waldorf's Starlight Room -- a popular 1930s hangout where F. Scott Fitzgerald would have felt at right home -- and then to the Grand Ballroom. When Childress and Dale Earnhardt won their first title in 1986, the post-banquet party was small enough to fit in the driver's suite. They quickly outgrew that and moved the celebration into the ballroom, where it continues each year. NASCAR, trying to milk the week for all it was worth, shepherded a weary champion to any media outlet willing to give it attention.

"They ran you to every single media outlet that existed in New York City," said four-time champion Jeff Gordon. "Now, it's much more selective. They're able to hit the big ones and get more impact. If [reigning champion] Jimmie [Johnson] thinks the schedule is bad now, he should have seen it back in '95 and '97. They ran you ragged. I was so worn out by Friday, I didn't even want to go to the banquet."

How much buzz Champions Week generates among New Yorkers is a constant topic of debate. The top 10 drivers in points made a loop around Midtown in their racecars on Wednesday morning, a "Victory Lap" that NASCAR estimates was witnessed by 150,000 people. While that number raised eyebrows among skeptics, it was clear the series scored some points -- every other person, whether a businessman in a tie or a doorman in a top hat, seemed to have a cell phone raised to snap a picture as the cars went by.

That's exposure sponsors don't get at any other time of year. And that's the kind of attention France envisioned when he audaciously moved his little banquet to the most important city in the world. Races in big cities, a national television contract, offices in New York and Los Angeles -- it's easy to trace them all back to that one little dinner, 26 years ago.

"It's like night and day," Miller said. "The first year it was really nice, because no one expected that it would be such a big event. I think it got criticized a little bit. What are you going way up to New York for? You're out of your realm. Why are you doing this? I think it took two or three years for people to understand why. And now you see the benefits of it. Now you've got national and international television, instead of just Wilkesboro TV."

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.