NASCAR teams have constantly struggled with financing, and teams depend heavily on the sponsorship money. But Dale Earnhardt Jr. believes that Joe Gibbs controversially sacking Kyle Busch is linked more to how the sport paid the charters themselves.

The fans’ theory about Gibbs not wanting Busch could be wrong.

In a recent episode of Dale Jr Download, the Hall of Famer talked about the share of TV money teams earn. And how small the number is, as he found out being in the market for a charter himself.

Junior explained, “They’re losing money. Not making money. And I thought too as a potential buyer of a charter that what NASCAR would give them would be way more. So when you hear NASCAR’s offer was very minimal, it made me go- ‘Oh wow I didn’t expect that’.
I expected NASCAR to go- ‘okay guys, we feel ya, so here is this new number to get you all a little bit in a better of a position’”

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But the shocking part came when Dale Jr revealed just how much the teams depend on their sponsors. “The teams are saying that 60 to 80% of money it takes for them to race comes from sponsors. And if a sponsor like M&Ms wakes up one day and says ‘we’re not here anymore’, that can destroy that team.”

Naturally, that responsibility falls on the owner, and the same would have happened to Gibbs too, “That puts the responsibility on the owner to find that 60 to 80%. And if he doesn’t, he gotta fire people, he can’t hire the driver he wants, like Kyle Busch. All of these things tumble into disarray.”

What do teams like Joe Gibbs Racing need to keep drivers like Kyle Busch on their teams?

As we found out, the teams account for 60-80% of all earnings to their sponsors. So it’s obvious that their exit would strongly affect the team itself. So, what do they need from NASCAR to be able to hire the drivers they want?

Junior explained, “They want a little insulation, they want a little protection. Instead of getting 5 million, they want that to go us significantly. So the TV money comes to the teams and they now aren’t solely responsible to depend on the sponsorships to race”

Essentially, they don’t want to depend that much on their sponsors. In fact, the Hall of Famer admitted, “When I heard that NASCAR came with just a minimal increase, it freaked me out a little bit”

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After everything we have heard lately, it seems like the only logical course of action is for NASCAR to give more of the TV share to the teams. But will NASCAR really do it? Let us know in the comments.