There have been a lot of things done in our sport in the last 30 years to elevate it and make it more mainstream. One of the goals is to make it less regional and make it more accessible to the stick and ball community. It was Bill France Jr.'s vision to take the awards dinner to New York. Bill felt, as did our sponsor at the time, RJ Reynolds, it would elevate our sport by going to the biggest city in the country to have a special night to honor our champion. That's what that whole night is about honoring the champion. As a team and a driver, you spend about 300 days trying to get to this point where you are sitting at the head table in the Grand Ballroom on that night.

What Bill saw was that we needed to honor the champion at the famous Waldorf Astoria along with all the sponsors. Trust me, there weren't that many sponsors in 1981. His vision was though that this thing would grow and it would be become something special. It has become that.

Back in 1981 all of us traveled to New York and were so excited. I guarantee you some of those boys had never even been to New York, including yours truly. Most of them didn't own a tuxedo and come to think about it, I am not sure all of us even wore them that night. For our sponsor, Mountain Dew, it was a very big deal because as you know, they are part of the PepsiCo family. PepsiCo's headquarters is located in Purchase, NY which is just a few miles outside of New York City, so it was a very big deal for them. Naturally they had all the right connections to maximize the exposure.

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