How much do SCS drivers make a year?

The speculation of money has always been a wonder, especially when it comes to owning a team and money perspectives. The pay rate depends on who you're talking about. Let's look at the team owning stance, a good car in the SCS only cost around $80,000-120,000. Teams like Mace Enterprises and Martin Motorsports have a total of 10-14 race cars on stand by for different tracks and back ups. Owning a team requires having the employees at the shop and the crew at the track to keep the organization going. You will need about 1.5 million dollars to own a team to the high standards like the big teams nowadays. That's not all either, you will need sponsors to help get you through the weekends or else it will be extremely hard to survive. We do see some teams like ARC Racing and CM Racing to name a few running with only a handful of crew members and just a couple cars back at the shop.


The pay rate of these drivers are not as high as you would think. The Daytona 500 purse rewards 1 million dollars by itself to the winner, the other races that follows rewards half a million. Of course the team owners do get a little bit out of their driver's paycheck from the races that goes into the shop for the team's efforts that weekend. Jesse Turner our 2015 champion earned a total of 2.9 million dollars in that season.


To own a team and do well with it you have to have the money that comes along with it. If you've been in the series for awhile, chances are you have a bit of money to start up a team. However, to be able to compete at the high level like most teams that have the money and backing isn't going to be as easy.


Full-Time drivers in the Cup Series will make around $1,000,000 - $3,000,000 depending on the drivers. In 2016, Levi Pascoe earned $1.2 million while Nick Mace earned $2.8 million.


Being an owner at this level is hectic, as most team owners do have certain standards that if a driver finishes in a certain position they keep a certain percentage of the winnings of that weekend. The teams do chip into the winnings and take what they need out of the driver's winnings to feed the organization the money it needs to keep going and reward the drivers. So that should answer the question, drivers do not make millions upon millions a year like some may suggest but they do earn on average in between $1,000,000 - $3,000,000.

Wonder how much all SCS drivers made last season besides Pascoe and Mace