NASCAR's Champions Week 2016: A look behind the scenes

FOX Sports host Daryl Motte warms up the crowd at a bar on the strip before an appearance by Jimmie Johnson on Wednesday night, two days before the banquet. In the church of NASCAR, this is what call-and-response looks like: Pacing the small stage like an itinerant preacher, Motte calls out, “If you’re not first …” and the faithful respond: “You’re last,” quoting that great proverb from “Talladega Nights.”

In a hoarse voice, a man behind me shouts “Johnson” over and over again. He tries to get the crowd to join him. When that doesn’t work he shouts, “El Cajon,” Johnson’s hometown. At least he doesn’t chant it. I’m 100 percent sure he’s not sober.

Johnson arrives onstage carrying a can of Coors Light and wearing what appears to be a sports coat with the collar popped up. It is, um, a unique look for him. Later, he tells me it’s supposed to be worn like that. Skeptical, I investigate with a hard-hitting follow-up question: “Were you trying to look like that? … I thought it might have been the tequila making you unaware …” he laughs and finishes (and answers) my question, “of what happened to me? That was an intentional downforce kit.”

Motte asks Johnson about his delirious celebration after winning his seventh championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway in November, and Johnson says something that sounds like, “I lost my shit dot com.” I start to write that down but stop, thinking I must have misheard him. Those words together make no sense, and Johnson doesn’t talk like that in public anyway … except that he says it again, then wonders out loud why he’s adding “dot com.”

This is a side of Johnson his friends and family know but that he rarely reveals in public. Or maybe it’s better to say he reveals it once a year, during banquet celebrations. Put another way: It’s not by accident that Johnson has a bottle of tequila on his person to take on stage during the After the Lap event on Thursday. Nor is it an accident that Stewart pounds about a third of it in front of a live audience of NASCAR fans.

The bottle gets passed around to the 16 Chase drivers on stage; a bunch of them decline, perhaps not because they lack the courage to drink the tequila but … Johnson tells me several drivers were drinking backstage but wouldn’t touch their drinks onstage.

Johnson even offers to give racing legend A.J. Foyt — Stewart’s boyhood hero and a surprise guest — a swig. In a moment that perfectly captures both the partying Johnson and the professional Johnson, the seven-time Sprint Cup champion, winner of 80 races and greatest NASCAR driver of his generation, if not all time, calls Foyt “sir” when he offers him the tequila.

God bless the NASCAR NMPA Myers Brothers Awards Luncheon. It’s an important industry event, yes, but full of drivers slamming tequila, it is not.

Still, this year’s version carries deep tension, not for what happens during but for what comes after. Shortly before the luncheon starts on Thursday, NASCAR sends out a surprise announcement that Brian France and a special guest will hold a press conference immediately after the luncheon.

Nobody knows knows what will happen, but everybody knows: The new entitlement sponsor will be announced. This is gigantic news.

Roughly half the NASCAR industry crams into the conference room like it’s Turn 1 on the final restart at Homestead. It is the most attended NASCAR press conference I’ve ever seen that didn’t involve Dale Jr. and/or mayonnaise and banana sandwiches.

When Monster Energy is announced as the new entitlement sponsor, it is clear a new era has started, a moment that everyone who isn’t hung over will remember where they were when it happened.

Nobody will say how much the deal is for or how long it will last or even what the series will be called. But those details are beside the point, anyway, or at least they are on this day. The point of the announcement is to set the sport on a new course after 13 years with Sprint. France charts that new course when he says: “We’re in the fun business.”

Mark Hall, director and chief marketing officer for Monster Energy, steals the rest of the show. He jokes about his age and asks one writer if he wants a job after the writer mentions that Monster Energy had driven Red Bull out of the market in Argentina. I see Hall later in a lobby bar having a drink with Kurt Busch, whose car will still carry the Monster livery next season even as the energy drink sponsors the entire sport. Our conversation is off the record, but I don’t think I’m betraying that to say Monster Energy, or at the very least Hall, is in the fun business, too.

– – –

At a photo shoot a few hours before the banquet. Johnson, crew chief Chad Knaus and Hendrick pose for photos with everyone and their brother. Jimmie Johnson Racing’s vice president John Lewensten arrives carrying a sandwich bag containing a battery-powered screw driver. Johnson has won so many championships that he knows the Goodyear trophy he will get tonight — a model of his car made of gold — comes with a case that has to be screwed shut, and that the screws are so long that turning them will blow out somebody’s forearms. Johnson admires Lewensten’s foresight. “That’s nothing but experience,” he says.

Xfinity Series champion Daniel Suarez and Camping World Trucks Series champion Johnny Sauter have their pictures taken, too. They have in common 2016 NASCAR championships and little else. After they won their respective championships, NASCAR officials seized on their yin and yang duality and took the unusual step of inviting them both to the Sprint Cup Series banquet events. They are side by side throughout.

They are like a buddy cop movie come to life: Sauter is an old school journeyman with deep family ties in the sport, while Suarez, considered by insiders to be a future superstar, is the most “next-gen” champion the sport has ever had.

Sauter, his dad and two of his brothers competed in all three of NASCAR’s top divisions. Suarez is the first person born outside of the United States to win a NASCAR championship. He moved from Mexico to Charlotte to pursue his racing dream and learned to speak English watching cartoons and movies. He still carries two phones — a red one for calls from Mexico and a black one for calls from America. He is good-looking and charming and full of wide-eyed enthusiasm … and in the car he blows everybody’s doors off.

Suarez is wearing a black tuxedo with a bow tie made, no lie, out of wood. Only problem: his cufflinks have disappeared, and he can’t find anybody with an extra set. He somehow procures a needle and thread, which his PR man uses to tie his cuffs together — this is NASCAR ingenuity at its finest.

Suarez’s status as one of NASCAR’s Next Big Things does not leave him immune from teasing, which follows news of his wardrobe malfunction. “Do you want me to tie your shoes?” jokes David Higdon, NASCAR’s vice president for Integrated Marketing Communications.

Suarez laughs. “This is the moment where I miss my mom,” he says.

– – –

The awards ceremony starts, and a band called American Authors plays their hit, “Go Big or Go Home.” On banquet week, NASCAR lives by that. If nothing else, the banquet always offers an unpredictable collection of celebrities, and this year Luke Wilson, Amy Purdy, Sting, Rosie Perez and LaDainian Tomlinson are all here.

Sometimes celebrity appearances are kept secret to surprise a driver. Such is the case when NASCAR vice chairman Mike Helton introduces Eddie Vedder, the lead singer for Pearl Jam and a friend of Stewart. Eddie Jarvis, Stewart’s business manager, said on Twitter that he first contacted Vedder on August 11 to invite him to the banquet, and that Stewart never had any inkling Vedder would be there.

From the podium, Vedder describes a donation from Stewart to EB Research Partnership, a charity started by Vedder and his wife that is committed to stopping epidermolysis bullosa, a skin disorder affecting children. When Vedder wraps up his speech, he and Stewart remain on stage. Hendrick walks to the podium and says the NASCAR community will give Vedder’s charity $1.8 million in Stewart’s name. Both Vedder and Stewart are shocked.

Vedder wipes a tear from his eye as he returns to the podium. He looks like someone used an ice cream scoop to dig out his heart and plop it onto the lectern for all the world to see. He looks at Stewart as if for guidance but Stewart has none to give. Vedder asks if he is still on TV. Told yes, he drops an F-bomb anyway. “Un-(expletive)-believable,” he calls the donation and promises to pay the fine himself. (The NBC Sports Network production crew cuts the audio in time.)

As all of this happens, Johnson watches from his seat at the head table. He is one of the few people who knew Vedder would be there and had contributed to the donation. He hopes the news will move Stewart to tears. He wants to see NASCAR’s resident bad boy cry. Johnson sees not tears on Stewart’s face but a smile that gets bigger and bigger.

I walk by Vedder off stage half an hour later and he still looks like he is in shock, as if when his heart got put back in it was three sizes too big.

– – –

There is one more surprise left.

Johnson sits at the head table, awaiting his speech. This is the seventh time he has done this. He hired a speechwriter for the first one, and it didn’t come out sounding like him. He was supposed to thank “an awful lot of people,” and instead he thanked “a lot of awful people.”

Since then, he has written his own speeches.

He knows this one is special, because he is tied with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt in the record number of championships. As he waits to be called to the podium, he sees something unusual on the teleprompter. It says, “Michael Phelps.”

What’s that about? Johnson wonders. He is a great fan and admirer of the Olympic swimming champion with 23 gold medals but has no idea what his name is doing on the teleprompter … until Phelps walks out, gives a short speech, and introduces him.

“I might have won as many championships as Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt, but I will never be ‘The King’ or ‘The Intimidator,'” Johnson says in his speech. “I am just a guy from California who always wanted to race.”

Johnson meets with reporters afterward. A camera crew from Hendrick Motorsports hands him a microphone. They want him to say a few words about his historic season and this night that was so full of surprises. He completes a sound check, and when the producer gives him the go-ahead sign, he lifts his hand in front of him and holds the microphone parallel to the ground. Instead of reliving his championship and speech, he says, “Johnson, out,” drops the mic and walks off.

He returns a few seconds later to give the camera crew what they need.