Former Charlotte Motor Speedway president H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler was instrumental in the growth of what has become the Sprint All-Star Race since its inception in 1985. With the exception of 1986, when it was run as a Mother's Day event at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the exhibition featuring race winners from the previous season has been held at Charlotte, and since 1992, has been run at night.

He recently talked about the role he played, the gamble he took to keep the event at Charlotte, how he was able to correctly pick the winner so frequently and what he would do differently, had he had the opportunity.

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Daytona is a great event for all the tracks because it kicks the season off, but we needed a big event kind of in the middle of the season.

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-- HUMPY WHEELER

Q. What was your role in the inception of what eventually became the all-star weekend at Charlotte?

Wheeler: The Coca-Cola 600 and Daytona 500 have always been friendly competitors. At one time, Charlotte had 100-mile races to qualify for the 600, like Daytona does. I forget when they stopped that, but I always wanted to have a race the weekend before the 600. So I went to Bill France Jr. and told him Charlotte and NASCAR are competing against the biggest race in the world -- the Indy 500 -- on that day, and we needed to put our best foot forward to try and make a big event.

Daytona is a great event for all the tracks because it kicks the season off, but we needed a big event kind of in the middle of the season. I've always believed that preparation is what makes an event big -- people taking about it, people getting ready for it. And Indianapolis, they used to go the whole month of May, with practice and qualifying and everything else. Daytona starts with the 24-hour race and then all of Speedweeks.

So I was pushing for the week before. He understood that, and he understood it would help everybody if the 600 was perceived as a big event. But we never could quite figure out exactly what to do. I wanted to run qualifying races. Jerry Long had become president of R.J. Reynolds and he was from Brooklyn, the last guy in the world you thought would like stock-car racing, but he really was a fan. And he got very interested in it. Ralph Seagraves was running special events for RJR then. I had been buzzing Ralph about having something the week before. But those guys got together and without saying a word to me, and decided to have an All-Star race. (Continued)