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NASCAR fans know that it takes a lot of sponsorship money to race in NASCAR. Especially nowadays, drivers are under pressure to bring in a significant amount of sponsorship revenue to even sniff racing at the sports highest levels. However, Hailie Deegan went on the “Rubbin’ is Racing” podcast with Spider and Large by Barstool Sports, and Deegan actually gave some hard numbers as to how much it costs to run in Xfinity and Trucks.
According to Deegan, in order to run for a top Truck Series team, it costs about $2 million per year. For a top-level Xfinity Series ride, it costs around $4-5 million per year.
The bottom line is that, if you want to race, you need to find a way to pay for it. It all comes down to sponsorship at the end of the day, and that is why drivers who have great relationships with sponsors tend to stay in NASCAR for a long time. Very few people have $4-5 million per year to spend, and even fewer are willing to spend that on a racing career.
While Deegan did not go into detail about how much it costs to race in the Cup Series, she did mention the instance of Joey Logano. He described the scenario in detail on the Kenny Wallace Show. Logano, in order to run in the Truck Series at Bristol, had to find a sponsor.
This highlights why sponsors hooking up to drivers for a full season are becoming fewer and farther between. It’s a lot of money for people to shell out. There are multiple instances of sponsors either leaving or pulling back support in recent years.
Kyle Busch was forced out of Joe Gibbs Racing in large part because M&M’s and Mars Chocolate left NASCAR. Denny Hamlin, who has been synonymous with FedEx for most of his career, is down from around 30 races per season to roughly about half a season.
It’s a lot of money for sponsors to pay up, so, most drivers have to get multiple sponsors. Rarely do drivers have the same sponsor on their car for an entire season.
Kyle Busch is a great example of this. Companies like Cheddar’s, 3Chi, QuikTrip, World Wallet, Lenovo, McLaren Custom Grills are on his car. It’s different from years past with Busch where he typically had M&M’s or CarQuest on his car for the majority of the season. However, there are exceptions.
Kyle Larson signed an agreement with HendrickCars.com in the offseason, which stipulates that they will be the primary sponsor for Larson for 35 Cup Series races plus all non-NASCAR races he races in. Having a sponsor commit to that much is very rare, and that is a testament to Kyle Larson’s talent.
However, it is important to remember that HendrickCars.com is owned by Rick Hendrick, Larson’s car owner. Its incredibly rare that you see a car owner with either the means or the desire to essentially fund a driver by themselves.
Chase Elliott, whose car is also owned by Hendrick Motorsports, signed a multi-year extension with Napa one year ago. Napa is on the car for 26 of 36 races throughout the season.
In the Xfinity Series, where Deegan is hoping to race, Justin Allgaier has a longtime sponsor, Brandt. Brandt will sponsor Allgaier for 20 of 33 races this season according to Dustin Long of NBC Sports. This is not an official statistic, but, according to Deegan’s estimate, that puts Brandt’s theoretical investment at about $2.5-$3 million.
Again, this is a sponsor that has been with Allgaier for a long time. They were on his car when he moved to Turner-Scott in the Xfinity Series, and even into the Cup Series before he moved to JR Motorsports.
These instances are rare, and they are also incredibly expensive for sponsors. It’s a lot of money to go racing, and Hallie Deegan put some numbers as to how much drivers really have to bring in order to race.
