The NASCAR community has only begun to descend on Las Vegas, but it's already clear that this Champion's Week will be very different from those that preceded it. In New York, for instance, the show-car "Victory Lap" around Midtown had to be discontinued because of complaints from locals and increasing fees from the city. In Las Vegas, the parade hasn't only been revived; it's been embellished with pit stops and burnouts.

Welcome to Vegas, where the collars will be a little looser, the events will be much more spread out, and the costs will be unquestionably lower than what NASCAR has experienced in recent years in Manhattan. For the first time since 1981, when Bill France Jr. moved the postseason awards ceremony from Daytona Beach to New York, NASCAR's banquet has a new home. Say goodbye to skyscrapers, to the Grand Ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria, and to the twinkling lights of Fifth Avenue at Christmastime. Say hello to sprawling casinos, to the opulence of the Wynn hotel, and to so much neon that you can probably see it from space.

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You have a partner in the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority that is helping foot the bill, and the bill is not nearly as high as it was in New York. It made perfect sense.

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CHRIS POWELL

Whether it will be a better experience for those participating in Champion's Week is yet to be determined. New York, especially in early December, carried with it a cachet that may be impossible to surpass. But people are already looking forward to warmer weather, to lower hotel room costs, and to wide-open spaces that will allow everything from golf to events at -- egad! -- an actual NASCAR race track. Some are clearly welcoming the change.

"There's going to be that atmosphere that everybody feels when they go to Vegas, that is let loose, let your hair down and have fun," said former Las Vegas resident Kurt Busch. "... New York was a lot of fun as well. We were going to be bundled up in coats and slacks and mittens. We're going to go out to Las Vegas. I put together a golf tournament on Tuesday when the drivers are starting to show up. Nobody has thought about a golf tournament around banquet week. So I hope that this will be fun and a tradition that may start up."

"I do understand the reasons we were in New York, and I'm going to miss that from being ... in the Big Apple," added four-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson, who made a media stop in New York last week. "But I think from working the banquet like I have the last three years and being the champion and running around town, we're going to have a lot more free time and better use of time in Las Vegas. With the holiday shopping and all that goes on in the city, we spend a lot of time riding in an SUV from obligation to obligation. Maybe it'll allow me to have a little bit more sleep between all the fun that we're having."

Still, breaking with 28 years of tradition hardly comes easily. France brought the postseason awards to New York to help court sponsors, knocking on doors at various corporate headquarters and shaking plenty of hands the first few years his sport came to town. Among the NASCAR community, at least, celebrating the champion in New York -- a city that's never had a race track, and where the series often struggles to make a dent -- began to feel less awkward with time. Drivers like Johnson and Jeff Gordon made homes there. Many competitors, especially those with spouses who enjoyed Manhattan shopping, began to look forward to the trip.

But everyone always wondered if New York felt likewise. The squeeze of inflated hotel room rates became suffocating, especially as the recession set in. Walk a few blocks from the Waldorf-Astoria, and you'd hardly know that NASCAR was in town. But nothing summed up the sometimes indifferent relationship between New York and NASCAR better than the fate of the Victory Lap, which was the sport's most obvious and public display of power. The cost of blocking off all those streets was nearly $1 million. There were plenty of stock brokers and attorneys who shot cell phone photos as the cars rumbled down Broadway. There were plenty more who groused about being held up on their way to work. (Continued)