NASCAR will neither confirm nor deny that its Nextel Cup Series will carry the name Sprint beginning in 2008. “To my knowledge, no final decision has been made,” said Ramsey Poston, NASCAR’s managing director of corporate communications, refuting an ESPN.com report that the name change was imminent [reported for the 2008 season, no sooner].

But Poston added, “if that’s the direction they want to go, we (NASCAR) would be supportive of that.” Nextel officials were flying to California Wednesday afternoon, in preparation for Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway, and not available for comment. However, USA TODAY learned that the topic of changing the NASCAR series name did not come up at Wednesday’s corporate communications meeting.

Changing the name would require substantial lead time and expense on the part of Sprint/Nextel, given the amount of signage and participating sponsorships involved. Poston noted that this issue of rebranding differs substantially in NASCAR’s eyes from the ongoing battle between AT&T/Cingular and Sprint/Nextel which prompted the filing of a $100 million countersuit by NASCAR this week.

“They are different agreements,” Poston said. “The contract between Nextel and NASCAR had written into it that they could rebrand one time. The agreements between Cingular (and alltel with NASCAR) did not. We went to bat for them to keep them in the sport with a grandfather clause.”

USA Today

Bookmark to: