NASCAR rolls its dice in Vegas
Friday, December 4th, 2009
Try a few laps around these ovals, Jimmie: Las Vegas showgirls escort four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion Jimmie Johnson onstage during Thursday’s NASCAR After The Lap event at the Hollywood Theatre at the MGM Grand Hotel/Casino during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champions Week in Las Vegas. (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
The champion’s from Southern California, the runner-up’s from Arkansas and the third guy on the podium is from the Golden State’s Bay Area. Las Vegas natives won a combined six races this year.
Tally it up. Judging by place of birth, this year’s Chase for the Sprint Club had two Californians, two Indianans, two Washingtonians (and it’s not D.C.), an Arkansan, a Nevadan, a Missourian, a Virginian and a North Carolinian. Then there was this guy from Colombia. Not Columbia, Mo. (Carl Edwards). South America. Hometown’s Bogota.
It doesn’t take anything but a map to determine that the epicenter of NASCAR’s drivers is a lot closer to Vegas than New York. The change can be justified on the basis of geography alone.
This, of course, is a little misleading in the same way that presidents are. Three presidents born in the Carolinas - Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson - migrated to Tennessee. Almost every driver in NASCAR migrated to North Carolina, though several maintain residences in Florida to avoid taxes.
All the big races save Indianapolis are still in the South. By and large, the biggest crowds are still in the South, though in many cases, the most empty seats are there, too. That’s a recent phenomenon that has affected almost every track. There’s this economic slump about which there’s been some talk.
Some will invariably ask how long NASCAR - once upon a time, by the way, a synonym was "Southern Stock Car Racing" - will continue to be centered in the South when the sport as a whole has taken on a national, even international, character.
In the short run, nothing’s going to change. NASCAR isn’t going to pull up stakes from Daytona Beach, Fla., and it definitely isn’t going to uproot its Hall of Fame from Charlotte since it’s being constructed even as these words are written. No one’s outsourcing engines to Mumbai … yet.
There’s a decent chance it’s never going to change. Actors still flock to New York and Hollywood even though movies are being made virtually everywhere. The center of an industry is a magnet that attracts all the talent that is within range, and the range is getting broader and the magnet stronger.
Out in Las Vegas, with the NASCAR Sprint Cup Awards Ceremony being rolled out Friday night, all reactions to the change - the soiree had been conducted stuffily at New York’s Waldorf Astoria since 1981 - have been positive. Among the fans not fortunate enough to be feted in Vegas, change is more noticeable because NASCAR stars haven’t been mingling with Matt Lauer, David Letterman and Regis Philbin all week.
But the captains of industry (or, more likely, Internet) have been oh, so happy, to soar in their Lear jets out to the desert, where there’s probably little talk of the economy. For several years, business in this country has been like playing craps anyway.