Racin' With Russ
By Russell Schmidt

Cup Champions Set Sights on New York
Monday, November 26, 2007

With the final laps in the record books, the top ten in the NASCAR Nextel Cup series will be spending most of the upcoming week in New York City, where area residents will get a chance to see them in person.

The busy schedule includes trips to radio stations, TV appearances, their actual race cars in parade formation through the streets of Manhattan, all culminating with Friday night's awards banquet at the famed Waldorf Astoria.

While champion Jimmie Johnson's duties start early in the week with radio and TV appearances, the rest of the top ten join the festivities on Wednesday with the top ten cars hitting the streets of Manhattan starting at 44th Street and Broadway, winding up at 7th and 43rd, right in front of the Hard Rock Café.

Do the fans love it? Oh, yeah. Do the drivers rev up the cars and leave rubber here and there? Oh, yeah.

The 1.5 mile journey starts about 8:30 a.m. and ends about an hour later and yes, the TV cameras will be rolling.

Thursday's lineup includes guest appearances by the top ten drivers at the Hard Rock Café with a special event named the Aflac Fan Fest. Here, local fans can meet and greet the drivers and take part in live trivia and prize giveaways, see this year's Nextel Cup and much more. The fun continues through Friday.

Friday morning's lineup has the drivers take part in the famous Myers Brothers Breakfast where more awards and photo opportunities take place.

The final tribute of the week takes place at the very fancy Waldorf where the driver speeches and large monetary awards are given.

I personally look forward to the driver remarks and remember, most of the night time event is aired live on TV. Some drivers are very comfortable in front of the camera and others simple stumble through their acceptance speech. Some use notes and yet others use the teleprompters.

We'll compare notes next week as to how the whole affair came off. It's usually amusing with some memorable lines.

Also think about the possibility of a new location or format. Drop me an idea…like Dress shirts and jeans in Kansas for the awards, then, move the affair to a local track with a 'no holds' barred 10-lap rental car race, $50 grand to the winner. Entertaining…

Rumorville

Besides the ARCA series having several dirt tracks dates on their 2008 menu, the popular series will hold a 500-mile race at the newly re-opened Rockingham Speedway and a 2.3 mile road course event in Millville, New Jersey. Sounds like some good stuff to me! Look for a handful of Cuppers to join the fun.

Looks like billionaire and multi-track owner Bruton Smith has played his cards correctly in getting what he wanted at Lowe's Motor Speedway. When the Concord officials originally voted down his ability to invest a large sum of money into adding a drag racing facility to the current mecca of racing, Smith started sniffing around for another location and move LMS as we know it. When you have that kind of money, you can pretty much do what you want.

Concord officials have not only changed their minds about the whole idea, but have now offered serious tax incentives, streets to be named after Smith and more. So, at this point, Smith's plans to expand the facility into part of the drag racing circuit will be put into motion.

Did you know?

In six years of racing among the Cup ranks, Jimmie Johnson has never finished lower than fifth in points, including two runner ups in 2003 and 2004. Pretty amazing, huh? That is certainly an impressive record by any standards. At only 32 years old, two titles and 33 wins to date, this driver is well on his way to a famed history among the stock car set.
That's it for this week. Next week's RWR will review the Cup banquet, discuss the upcoming Busch affair and more racing news from around the globe.