2007 NEXTEL All-Star Challenge

The 2007 Nextel Open and Nextel All-Star Challenge was a professional auto race held on Saturday, May 19, 2007, at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, a suburb of Charlotte. Native Carolinian and former NBA superstar Michael Jordan was the grand marshal of the event.

The race is unique to its "All-Star Game" format, much like those in the other North American major "stick and ball" sports (baseball, football, basketball and hockey). Only race winners (either drivers or teams) in the 2006 and the first eleven races of the 2007 seasons, plus former Winston/Nextel Cup Champions and All-Star event winners from the past decade (covering the span between 1997 and 2006) automatically qualify for the main event. A description on how the race was reformatted for the 2007 running can be found here. The race also awards no points as it is an exhibition race, meaning drivers can take greater risks than they normally would do in a regular event. In addition, on restarts of the race after caution flags, the cars line up in a double file restart, akin to the start of a regulation race.

Qualifying for this event is abnormal to the standards of NASCAR. Those entered for the main event take three timed qualifying laps (instead of the usual two laps used in all sanctioned oval races), but they must take a required pit stop for four tires after either the first or second lap, coming in at the pit road speed (in the case of LMS, 45 miles per hour), but come out at full throttle. This puts a premium on the pit crew teams to be fast like regular pit stops, and to even out the field, pit box No. 22 is used for all qualifiers. Infractions will also incur time penalties. Also starting in 2007, the selection of the pit boxes used by teams were made after the annual Pit Crew Challenge event to be held three days earlier at Charlotte Bobcats Arena, won by the Ryan Newman No. 12 team. In the qualifying, Matt Kenseth won the pole. Kevin Harvick was bumper-to-bumper with Jimmie Johnson coming to the start/finish line to win the race.

...
Wikipedia