MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- There is perhaps no better nighttime stroll in America than a walk down Ocean Drive, where the pink and blue neon of the boutique art deco hotels stands opposite palm trees swaying in the Atlantic breeze. This is the Miami of film and television and popular perception, the Miami of fast cars and supermodels and velvet nightclub ropes, the Miami of Jackie Gleason and Hyman Roth and Crockett and Tubbs. It's beguiling, it's beautiful, and it's a long way from Homestead-Miami Speedway in more ways than one.

The racetrack is further south, near the terminus of the Florida Turnpike, not far from the modest creek that separates the mainland from the upper Keys. It's bordered by the real Florida, unforgiving swampy environs of alligators and armadillos, wild wetlands full of sawgrass blades sharp enough to draw blood. Built in an area wiped out by the wrath of Hurricane Andrew 16 years ago, the speedway began as a modest facility that, president Curtis Gray will admit, wasn't ready to accommodate NASCAR's premier series when the tour first arrived in 1999. Now it hosts the season finales for all three national circuits, and in the process attempts to bridge the distance -- physical and metaphorical -- between the Everglades and South Beach.

They've done a credible job, rebuilding the facility from a flat track that put on monotonous, featureless races to one with variable banking that drivers love. They've kept the grandstand capacity of 65,000 small enough to keep ticket demand up and big enough to look good on TV. They've tried very hard to associate themselves with the Miami that everyone envisions, knowing full well that in a city that's hosted more Super Bowls than any other, it takes a championship event just to make a dent. Does the race seem to get lost sometimes in a sprawling metro market, during a time of year when the Dolphins dominate the airwaves? No question. But it would likely be that way even if NASCAR raced right down Brickell Avenue.

You occasionally hear grumbles from the purists, most of whom have never experienced the short-sleeved joy of being in South Florida in November, and who'll grumble about almost anything that's not exactly as it was in 1973. NASCAR in Miami? Well, don't forget that before he went off and became patriarch of the Alabama Gang, Bobby Allison raced on ovals around his native Hialeah. Don't forget that Herb Thomas won four of the seven Grand National events contested up in Palm Beach in the '50s. Don't forget that Juan Montoya lives here, as does almost every prominent international open-wheel driver. Don't forget that for a while, Jeff Gordon called the region home. Don't forget that it's easy to get run over by somebody doing 120 mph on the Don Shula Expressway.

"I think it's great," Gordon said. "This is great exposure to help grow this sport to certainly a different fan base than what we're used to. The weather is fantastic. The competitors like it. I hope the media likes it, too. It's a great racetrack, too. This has turned into being one of my favorite racetracks since they reconfigured the banking. It's just an awesome place. I can't think of a better place, really to wind down the season."

Still, every now and then you hear folks wonder about moving the NASCAR finale to a setting that's, well, a little more NASCAR-like. Evidently, all those cold, rainy weekends at Atlanta Motor Speedway seem glorious in retrospect. No, Miami is not exactly the hub of the NASCAR universe. Sure, there are other markets where the sport gets a little more attention. But it's time to get realistic here. Taking into account what November weather is like across much of the country, taking into account what NASCAR -- or any other sport, for that matter -- wants to get out of a championship weekend, then where else are you going to put it?

Go down the schedule. Right off the bat, 10 tracks are automatically discounted because of weather concerns. Hey, you may dearly love Bristol, Dover, Richmond, Pocono, Michigan, Indianapolis, Chicagoland, New Hampshire, Watkins Glen or Kansas, but it's just too dang cold there this time of year to race. Yeah, yeah, you're a tough guy, you don't care. Give you a parka and a thermos of coffee and fire 'em up, right? Wrong. Tell that to the sponsors who are paying the bills, who like to entertain in outdoor hospitality areas and in good weather. There's a reason most Super Bowls are played in Sun Belt cities, and golf majors are spread out from April to August.

Phoenix, Darlington and Martinsville are nice tracks, but they're also older, and in terms of facilities they're just not what you want to put forward with the eyes of the nation potentially upon you. You're not going to end the season on a road course, which discounts Infineon. As much as some pine for a finale on the high banks of Daytona, bookending the season in NASCAR's ancestral home, it would be unequivocally unjust to decide the champion on a restrictor-plate track, where whims and circumstance often determine who winds up hooked to the back of a wrecker. So sorry, Talladega. You're out, too.

That brings us to six -- California, Las Vegas, Homestead-Miami, Texas, Atlanta and Lowe's Motor Speedway. Atlanta hosted the finale for 14 years, with mixed results, and it seems highly unlikely that NASCAR would go back. Charlotte, because of its latitude (high temperature Tuesday: 45 degrees), would be just as unpredictable in terms of weather. Texas and California offer better conditions, but also the risk of empty seats, something NASCAR doesn't want to see for a finale. So in all honesty, looking at the situation critically and taking personal preference out of the equation, it comes down to two: Las Vegas and Miami, those glitzy neon capitals standing a continent apart.

Admittedly, in a sport with a bloated schedule, there's something to be said for the idea of crowning a champion in Las Vegas, staying an extra day, and fulfilling Bruton Smith's wish of holding the awards banquet at Mandalay Bay or the MGM Grand. Of course, you could do the exact same thing in Miami, a city with no shortage of gala events and grand places to host them. As with real estate, the difference is location, location, location -- a western finale surely wouldn't be ideal for television, and a four-hour flight home is the last thing anyone wants after 38 weeks on the road. For competitors, South Florida also offers an automatic, day-after-the-season getaway; during Sunday's race, the monitor on one pit box counted down circuits not as "laps to go," but "laps until Key West." Think these guys were ready for some R&R on the beach?

They're not the only ones. No, Miami isn't a place that lives and breathes NASCAR. But some of the diehards out there need to realize that getting provincial and insular is a surefire way to stunt growth -- just ask the Republican party. You put everything in Charlotte, then all you're doing is preaching to the faithful, all the time, and pushing the series further toward the margins of the American sports landscape. Give NASCAR credit for trying to make some kind of an imprint in places like South Florida, for trying to break free of the limitations its own fan base often places upon the sport. Plus, after 10 long months of hard work, everyone deserves a little time in the sun.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer