Do NASCAR Teams Pay to Gain Access to Racetracks? The Hidden Team Costs Fans Never Hear About

Running a NASCAR team involves several expenditures. From salaries to equipment, the list goes on and on until the team owner’s pocket is nearly empty. These expenses are also why there has been a lot of drama surrounding the charter system in recent years. But one key money drainer that many miss out on when discussing this topic is the track pass.

It is natural for fans to pay money to get access to race tracks during events. But in NASCAR, the teams have to pay a significant amount of money to get passes for their personnel as well. Interestingly, there are different types of passes for teams based on their needs. Joe Gibbs Racing’s president, Dave Alpern, detailed this in a video posted on the team’s YouTube handle. 

He said, “We do have to pay for them, and the bigger your team is, the more significant that expense is. So, everyone who goes to the race track every weekend that’s what’s called the hard card. We purchase those at the beginning of the season for key personnel who go every week. Some of our key sponsors and some of our executives. For people who don’t go every week, there’s another license.”

The week-to-week passes are a separate category, and they have to be purchased from NASCAR regularly for a predetermined fee. There is only a limited number of these passes, and large teams such as Joe Gibbs Racing incur heavy costs on them. Alpern continued, “I would say, particularly a large team like ours, racing eight cars in two different series… we have a very significant budget to get our folks to the race track every week.”

Before the charter system was put into place, teams had to pay an entry fee for each race they took part in. However, now, for each charter that a team owns, it fills out one application and pays one fee for all 36 races. Notably, they don’t have to pay a fee for the All-Star Race or the Clash because they’re non-points, invitation-only races.

Putting everything together, teams spend quite an amount registering for and attending the points-paying races. No wonder teams often complain about not being able to meet running costs with the revenue share that NASCAR is offering them.