NASCAR: For now, it’s still a premier series with a small ‘p’

NASCAR still hasn’t announced what its 2017 championship will be called after announcing during the recent Champion’s Week in Las Vegas that Monster Energy has signed on as new title sponsor of the Cup Series.

(Vegas Golden Knights hockey fans can relate.)

NASCAR chief Brian France said during the news conference it probably won’t be called Monster Cup. He didn’t say the two words, fearing it would produce snickers among media types with prepubescent mindsets.

The only news this week was France refuting a report that Monster’s deal is worth $40 million for two years, with an option to renew for two years. The original deal with Nextel/Sprint in 2004 was $750 million for 10 years.

“Those are not accurate numbers,” France said during a surprise call-in to a satellite radio show. He did not disclose what numbers were accurate.

That the championship — temporarily being called the “premier” series — no longer will have Cup in the title probably will give stock car racing loyalists something else to complain about.

Fact is the championship trophy hasn’t been an actual cup since Winston (R.J. Reynolds) bowed out as title sponsor before the 2004 season. And even then you would have had to unscrew the ornamental brass pieces on top to drink a beer out of it.

When Nextel came on board in 2004, so, too, did a new trophy. The design sort of looks like a racing flag flapping in the breeze. Or maybe it’s just an artsy-fartsy swirly thing that has nothing to do with stock car racing. Anyway, you couldn’t drink a beer out of the Sprint Cup.

So I really don’t know understand why some of these stock car fans are getting all worked up. It’s not like rebranding the Heisman Trophy, or even renaming the Independence Bowl the Poulan Weed-Eater Bowl, which it was for a time.

Football fans in Shreveport, Louisiana, eventually got used to it.

The same thing will happen with the Monster Cup, or whatever they wind up calling it. Maybe you’ll even be able to drink a beer out of it.

LVMS

• The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway has been named NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series Pacific Division Track of the Year for the fourth consecutive year. LVMS director of racing operations Jeff Foster accepted the award — a plaque, not a cup — at a banquet.

NASCAR

• Here’s a novel approach to getting Kurt Busch’s autograph — on the bottom line of a real estate deed. The Virginia Pilot reports the NASCAR star from Las Vegas is selling a vacant quarter-acre lot in Croatan Beach, Virginia, for $1.5 million. It’s picturesque and idyllic, according to the photo, and for NASCAR fans of a certain age may conjure images of when stock cars ran the beach in Daytona. Or various scenes from the movie “Summer of ’42.”

ELSEWHERE

• Indianapolis Motor Speedway said it will not move the starting time of the 2017 Indy 500 back to the former 11 a.m. green flag to facilitate the Busch brothers of Las Vegas and other NASCAR drivers who have expressed interest in attempting the Indy 500-Coca Cola 600 same-day double. Kurt Busch was the last driver to run both races, in 2014. IMS officials said the speedway would continue to assist NASCAR drivers with transportation and other logistics should they commit to the double.

• Sam Schmidt, the IndyCar team owner from Henderson, was back behind the wheel for the annual iRacing Pro Race of Champions on Wednesday and finished 16th, beating IndyCar veterans Will Power and Townsend Bell, among others. Schmidt, a quadriplegic as a result of a racing crash, drove in the annual online race by using a modified simulator.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.