NEW YORK -- The velvet rope isn't really a rope at all, but one of those metal barriers police use to keep crowds at bay. On this Wednesday morning it's separating the throng in Times Square from the 10 Nextel Cup cars lined up along 44th Street, the starting line for the sport's annual lap around Midtown Manhattan. As the firesuit-clad drivers emerge, fans and media members are all pushed back to clear the way. That is, until a NASCAR representative appears out of nowhere, orders you to follow him, and virtually thrusts you into a temporary passenger seat wedged into Kevin Harvick's No. 29 Chevrolet.

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Welcome to the kickoff of Champions Week, the year-end celebration that concludes Friday night with the Nextel Cup banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Jimmie Johnson may be the champion, but this week NASCAR also honors all of the top 10 drivers in final points. And No. 10 is Harvick, fresh from an appearance at a convention for associate sponsor Camping World in Kentucky, who slides into his red and yellow racecar and flips a switch to make it howl.

It may be a show car now, but this machine is still very much the real thing. A team representative says it was one of the first Cars of Tomorrow built at Richard Childress Racing, and the car owner himself confirms that it was used in competition a handful of times. There's no passenger door, so despite a buttoned blazer and topcoat, the reporter along for the ride has to reach inside the window opening, grab hold of the roll cage, swing the left leg in, and carefully lower his 6-foot-1 frame onto a stadium seat perched atop a foam block. Oh, and then there's the matter of this duffel bag containing Kevin's street clothes. Would you mind holding onto that as well?

The vibration made by the 750-horsepower engine can be felt to the bone. So can every pothole or bump in the road. So can the 40-degree cold, pouring in through the window openings. But all that's quickly forgotten as you make the left turn onto Broadway, closed to all traffic except the Nextel Cup cars, and you have the canyons of neon and concrete virtually to yourself. Carl Edwards, the driver in front of Harvick, spins his tires and fishtails to play to the crowd, pressed three- and four-deep in Times Square. Sure, TV ratings are down. But the mass of humanity witnessing this, observers say, is bigger than it was last year.

The line of cars winds down Madison Avenue, past St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Museum of Modern Art, and back to Broadway. Every other person, it seems, is snapping a photo with a cell phone camera. There are waves from doormen in top hats, fist-pumps from businessmen in suits, and scowls from those who want to cross the street and get to work. But the only real casualty is the rear bumper of Matt Kenseth's No. 17 car, clearly dented from a bump by Kyle Busch.

It's only the beginning. Succeeding in NASCAR's premier series takes dedication, perseverance, stamina and strength. So does Champions Week, a continuous loop of receptions, engagements, dinners, toasts, luncheons, introductions and interviews that tests the mettle of everyone from Johnson down to the lowliest of reporter or public relations rep. The banquet itself is the part that gets on TV. But it's only a small portion of an entire week of activities that NASCAR and its teams and sponsors use to celebrate success and wield influence. Sure, much of this week is about honoring Johnson, the back-to-back champ. But it's also about getting noticed, and to that extent nothing is too much.

Hence the slow ride through the blocked-off streets of Midtown. The loop ends at a Hard Rock Café that was once the Paramount Theatre, a landmark edifice where a folk singer named Bob Dylan first met the Beatles and decided to go electric. The presentation and interview session is brought to you by Sunoco, NASCAR's official fuel supplier, which decks out the bartenders and wait staff in the same yellow shirts its officials wear at the racetrack. The format will repeat itself over and over at different events: a video presentation, a Q&A with a host (almost always a TV broadcaster) and then open interviews with assembled media. Johnson's been here since Sunday night, when he met with NASCAR to plan out the week. Jeff Gordon, who's been through this four times, says it's all a blur.

That's understandable. Because soon after the Hard Rock it's time for a champion's lunch at the esteemed 21 Club, a former Prohibition speakeasy, where Johnson and his team dine in a Harbor Room decorated by oil paintings of steamships and clippers. Waiters in dinner jackets and bow ties serve chicken or beef on fine china. Everything is dark wood paneling and brass. Car owner Rick Hendrick steps to the podium and mentions a recent phone call from crew chief Chad Knaus. "He stopped by a Maserati dealership," Hendrick says, as the crew chief shakes his head.

It's a regal setting eclipsed only by the day's next stop, an evening reception at Tiffany and Co., the renowned jeweler and silversmith that crafted the Nextel Cup trophy. All six floors of the flagship store are open for business during the event, meaning that you're free to drop the credit card on that $186,500 diamond ring if the spirit moves you. Word is that the store does a brisk business during the event, and that more than a few driver wives or girlfriends go home with something in a trademarked Tiffany blue box.

It's a gorgeous building, full of polished granite and marble, but it's not quite as jaw-dropping as the first stop Thursday morning. That would be Cipriani, a former savings bank turned into a restaurant and banquet facility, a stunning Italian Renaissance masterpiece with a soaring 65-foot ceiling and columns that seem to climb forever. It's the site of the Myers Brothers luncheon hosted by NASCAR and the National Motorsports Press Association, which is sort of like the dinner they have before the Oscars to give out all the technical awards. Every one of those little stickers on the front of a racecar represents a contingency award, and every one of them is given out in a three-hour presentation Thursday.

It used to be part of the regular banquet, but the thing got so long -- almost five hours -- that they moved some of the awards to the Myers Brothers luncheon, which is named after two late racers and has become something of a mini-banquet itself. It also used to be a breakfast on banquet morning, but given how late the bars stay open in New York, and given how ready some competitors are to cut loose after a long season -- well, let's just say asking them to be awake and alert at 7 a.m. wasn't the best of ideas.

It's a snazzy affair, full of video boards and spotlights and the best sea bass you'll find in New York. All of NASCAR's champions, from Johnson down to the winner of the modified regional tours, are honored. All NASCAR executives, officials and track operators are mentioned. Awards are bestowed on marketers, humanitarians, crew chiefs, engine builders, drivers and pit crews. Gordon, who dominated much of this season but lost the title by 77 points, takes home a ton of hardware and walks away clutching a fistful of white envelopes containing $100,000 checks. NASCAR's own Martin Scorsese earns honor after honor, but Saturday he'll watch the top prize go to somebody else.

But there's a lot of hand-shaking, networking and cork-popping yet to go first. Thursday evening brings a round of off-the-record social engagements that, for the hard-core partier, can last until dawn. First there's a reception in the high-rise studios of Sirius Satellite Radio, where Tony Stewart hosts a weekly program. Then it's on to a chic Midtown nightclub for an event hosted by Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Teresa Earnhardt, where the reclusive car owner comes across as pleasant and talkative, but makes no promises of going on the record anytime soon. It all concludes at another nightclub in the Chelsea area, where title sponsor Sprint hosts a mammoth, elbow-to-elbow get-down visited by Lance Armstrong, David Spade, the dude who played Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite, and too many waiflike Avril Lavigne wannabees to count.

At some point, you need a break. So you pop into a corner grocery and delicatessen for a sandwich and a soda, where taped to the cash register is a fake $1 million bill featuring the face of Lowe's Motor Speedway president Humpy Wheeler. It's the same play money the promoter gives out on the weekend of his track's all-star race. "You know that guy?" the proprietor asks. "He was here. He gave us two of them. We have one here, and one in the office in the back."

And they say NASCAR can't win over New York. They're working on it, one deli at a time.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.