Of course, the winning driver also makes a more-than-decent chunk of change by winning the event.
How much money does the winning driver make? Well, that’s a big unknown because of a policy change that NASCAR made in 2016. They no longer reveal the purses available in each event and have stopped disclosing drivers’ earnings. Why? It has to do with the sport’s charter system, which guarantees revenue to 36 of the 40 cars in each field.
“It’s a new foundation and a new era,” NASCAR Chief Operating Officer Brent Dewar told NBC Sports. “We’ve changed a lot of things from that old model to this model. That’s one of the things that was from a different time and place.”
As such, it has become more difficult to compare drivers using total winnings and other similar metrics. And it has become very difficult for fans to figure out what the winner of each race has made.
NASCAR did reveal the record-setting purse for the Daytona 500 in 2020. That, along with some other math, has at least given fans a range for what the winner pockets.
Below is what to know about the Daytona 500 purse ahead of the race being run in 2022.
What is the Daytona 500 purse for 2022?
2022 Daytona 500 purse: TBD ($23. 6 million in 2020)
NASCAR has yet to reveal details about the Daytona 500 purse for 2022. They never did for the 2021 race, either, so it’s unlikely that they will disclose the amount in 2022 given their reporting policy.
That said, NASCAR did reveal for the 2020 race that the purse for “The Great American Race” would be $23.6 million. That was the largest total in American motorsports history to that point.
The 2020 purse was up $5.6 million from the 2015 purse, which marked the last time before 2020 that NASCAR reported the total purse. The prize pool in 2015 was $18 million in total.
How much money does a driver get for winning the Daytona 500?
Without knowing the exact purse of the race, it’s impossible to say what the driver will make. That said, we can make a rough estimate based on numbers from previous races.
In 2015, Joey Logano earned $1,581,453 after winning the race. That comprised just under nine percent of the $18 million purse from that year’s race. If NASCAR stays consistent with those percentages, that means that the winner in 2020, Denny Hamlin, would have taken home roughly $2.07 million in prize money.
Given that NASCAR hasn’t announced a historic purse in the two years since 2020, it’s safe to assume that the winner would pocket between $1.6 million and $2 million. But again, that’s just an estimate.
