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.

You won't hear much of that in Las Vegas, where NASCAR has a more than willing partner in the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), which used a site fee reportedly between $500,000 and $1 million annually to secure a three-year contract. There's also Las Vegas Motor Speedway, whose management team played a key lobbying role in helping convince NASCAR to move the event.

"You look at the Victory Lap, the drivers driving the cars down Fifth Avenue or whatever it was, and the expense involved that NASCAR had to foot," said speedway president Chris Powell. "Now 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. There were so many upsides to bringing the whole week to Las Vegas. The only thing you really lost is it's not New York. It's not New York in December, and there was a certain amount of cachet that went with that. But 28 years later, I think this is a proper move to make."

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Las Vegas will be a nice, refreshing thing, a shot in the arm a little bit this time of year for us and for the industry.

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BRIAN FRANCE

Powell and his boss, Speedway Motorsports Inc. mogul Bruton Smith, had been lobbying NASCAR to consider moving the event for several years. At Smith's urging, Powell wrote a letter to NASCAR chairman Brian France, and also talked with the CEO and vice chairman Jim France on a number of occasions, including last year in the lobby of the Waldorf. In 2007, Powell hosted LVCVA president Rossi Ralenkotter at the event in New York. All the while, Powell preached the message -- that New York was cost prohibitive and indifferent, that the Waldorf was growing too small, that Las Vegas could do the event the way it was meant to be done.

"Ten years ago it would have been ruled out, dismissed out of hand," Powell said. "Three and four years ago we started getting feedback that there was interest. We started to hear there was an open mind in Daytona."

It all came together quickly. As recently as last year's banquet, NASCAR officials talked openly about New York's importance to the sport and keeping the event in Manhattan in the immediate future. But everyone in the sport was feeling the effects of the down economy, and the idea of spending $500 a night on a shoe-boxed sized room wasn't very popular anymore. In early 2009 the idea of moving Champion's Week to Las Vegas began to pick up steam. By April, the deal was done.

"Las Vegas will be a nice, refreshing thing, a shot in the arm a little bit this time of year for us and for the industry," Brian France said. "It's going to save a lot of money, starting with that, which is important in this economy. But also the fact that the city of Las Vegas is so welcoming, the Wynn hotel has been incredible. My anticipation is it's going to be a fun week and attendance is going to be at an all-time high, in part because we have the capacity to expand because the venue lets us do that, and in part because I think people just want to come to Las Vegas in December."

NASCAR is taking advantage of the multitude of venues that Las Vegas has to offer. The Wynn will serve as event headquarters and host the awards ceremony itself, which is scheduled for Friday at 9 p.m. Eastern and will be televised by Speed. The Venetian will host the after party as well as Thursday's National Motorports Press Association/Myers Brothers Awards. The MGM Grand will act as the starting and ending point for the Victory Lap. Wednesday, the speedway will host a free fan-fest and a $250 charity roast hosted by Las Vegas personality Carrot Top.

Powell believes there's plenty of room for expansion, envisioning things like motorcycle rides through Red Rocks canyon and trade-show-style exhibits for sponsors. And he also thinks it will be evident to visitors that NASCAR is in town.

"The city is very excited about it," Powell said. "We've done a pretty good job out here of making people aware that championship week for the past 28 years had been at the Waldorf in New York. The hotel industry here in town is especially appreciative that NASCAR and the speedway and also the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority have worked together to bring the industry to Las Vegas. This is a town that has been hard-hit by this economic downturn, probably as bad as any city in the country outside of Detroit. So it is a wonderful thing to bring Champion's Week to Las Vegas, without question. It has reverberated in the community."

In that respect, Las Vegas has already achieved something that New York never did.