Chase Elliott Explains the Economics of Being a NASCAR Driver and How They Are Paid by the Teams

NASCAR Cup Series driver Chase Elliott (9) during qualifying for the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Being a professional race car driver in the NASCAR Cup Series is not always the glamorous affair that fans assume. Chase Elliott spoke about how drivers get paid by teams for their work in a recent interview on the MeatEater Podcast Network. His explanations provided a fresh perspective on how money flows between the parties.

First off, Elliott clarified that drivers are under contract with their teams. They aren’t treated quite the same as an employee in a multi-national corporation and don’t receive many of the human resource benefits that a regular old workman would. For instance, teams don’t even provide drivers with health insurance.

There are specialized companies that insure individuals in high risk sports such as stock car racing and drivers partner with them for insurance. The money for the same goes out of their personal pockets. A contract that a driver signs with his team might extend anywhere from two to five years. Shorter deals aren’t uncommon as seen in the case of Daniel Suarez recently.

When it comes to compensation, there’s no telling, common to every driver out there. Some have a base renumeration, some don’t. Some get paid a percentage of the race winnings, some don’t. But does all this mean that drivers aren’t employees of the organization that they drive for every weekend?

Elliott said, “I work for Hendrick Motorsports. So, I’m basically a contractor of Hendrick Motorsports. I work for them. Rick is my boss, and he pays me. You’re not just a freelance dude. I’m very much employed by HMS. But you are responsible for all the things you’re talking about, whether it is health insurance or that sort of thing.”

When a driver wins a race, the winner’s check is assigned to the team and not the driver. This might not work out really well in other sports, but Elliott is rather comfortable with it. He reasoned that it was the team that was putting the car on the track and that it had the right to receive the purse winnings. But then again, some teams do offer a share of the purse to their drivers.
Joe Gibbs Racing’s social media team went through the trouble of detailing this on a YouTube video last year. An official said, “Our drivers not only have a base salary, but yes, they get a portion of the purse just like the team does. So, a driver has an incentive to win a race. So, every week when we get the purse paid out, that purse gets divided.”
A portion of the purse goes to employees, a portion goes to the team, and another goes to the driver. It is inferrable from these conversations that the financial relationship between a team and its driver is far from being straightforward.
Post Edited By: Srijan Mandal
Chase Elliott

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Gowtham Ramalingam

Gowtham is a NASCAR journalist at The SportsRush. Though his affinity for racing stems from Formula 1, he found himself drawn to NASCAR's unparalleled excitement over the years. As a result he has shared his insights and observations by authoring over 3000 articles on the sport. An avid fiction writer, you can find him lost in imaginary worlds when he is not immersed in racing. He hopes to continue savoring the thrill of every lap and race together with his readers for as long as he can.

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