Denny Hamlin says that the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series is the most fragile series in NASCAR financially, and that roughly 80% of its Saturday drivers pay their team owners to race. Parker Kligerman, a veteran driver who still races part-time and works as a TV analyst, says that’s only part of the picture.
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Hamlin made his claim on a recent episode of Actions Detrimental, which also covered Sheldon Creed’s move from Haas Factory Team to Sam Hunt Racing. He talks about a system in which drivers frequently move between teams based on how much funding they can bring. According to him, the competition for seats can become a financial negotiation, with teams weighing potential drivers against the money available to support their programs.
“What’s happening is you keep seeing these drivers go from ride to ride. They’re switching teams like musical chairs every year, and the unfortunate truth is that 80% of those drivers in the Saturday races are paying some sum of money to the team owner to drive those cars.”
The price tags that circulated with Hamlin’s clip were not just whipped out of thin air. PitByNumbers paired the clip with estimates part-time O’Reilly driver Brad Perez gave FanAmp in September.
A seat in a car expected to finish 25th or worse runs $40,000 to $45,000 a race, he said, while a top team like Joe Gibbs Racing or JR Motorsports costs $100,000 to $150,000. Perez said Daytona pushes a mid-tier ride to $60,000 to $70,000, and some teams add a $10,000 to $15,000 crash deposit.
A full season in a 25th-or-worse car, he estimated, costs $1.3 million to $1.4 million. He also said cash in hand beats promises, because teams have gear bills and payroll due long before the green flag.
“I know it looks… the O’Reilly series, from your ownership, from the fan’s perspective, is the most solid series that NASCAR has,” Hamlin said. “But I’m telling you, it is the most fragile when it comes to financials.”
Kligerman did not dismiss the role of money in determining who gets to race. Instead, he argued that Hamlin’s broad assessment overlooks the different ways teams assemble the funding required to compete.
Responding to a short clip of the podcast posted on PitByNumbers’ official X account, Kligerman said, “I’d say you’re maybe 50% correct and Denny is being a little harsh.”
He explained that a driver’s financial backing can involve several different parties, making it difficult to classify a seat as simply paid or hired. A family might contribute money toward a driver’s program while a manufacturer covers the engine bill because it believes the driver has the talent to succeed.
In situations like this, the driver is not necessarily funding the entire operation, even if family money plays a part in securing the seat. The manufacturer’s contribution also reflects an investment in the driver’s potential.
He also added a second factor; sponsorship deals, which can make the picture even more complicated. Kligerman cited an example in which a car has sponsorship for 30 races, but the agreement covers only a fraction of the budget required to run the program.
The team may then rely on the driver’s family or outside investors to make up the shortfall. From the outside, the car might appear to have a sponsor and a hired driver. However, personal funding remains essential to keeping it on track.
Kligerman also rejects the notion that this is a new financial problem for NASCAR. He argues that funding has always played a significant role in motorsports, even during periods when the drivers and sponsors involved were more recognizable to fans.
“Motorsports has always been this way, always will be,” he wrote in the same post.
He added that the financial arrangements behind drivers can remain complicated even after they reach the Cup Series. A young driver might eventually secure a salaried position, but their family could have spent tens of millions of dollars helping them reach that level.
Kligerman questioned whether such a driver can truly be considered hired when the money invested in their development may never be recovered through their eventual earnings.
The distinction matters because a driver’s current contract does not necessarily reveal how much financial support was required to get them there. A seat that looks like a conventional professional opportunity may have followed years of family investment and outside backing.
Ultimately, Kligerman argued that the drivers who reach each series reflect the combination of talent, economics and viewership that the sport can support at a given time. He also encouraged fans to appreciate the willingness of people and businesses to finance racing in the first place.
The wider financial challenges facing smaller NASCAR teams help explain why the debate matters. Earlier this year, Alpha Prime Racing co-owner Tommy Joe Martins came on The Teardown podcast, to discuss the pressure teams face in assembling the budgets required to compete.
He said that sponsorship covers 40% or more of a small O’Reilly team’s budget, which he put at $2.5 million to $3 million a year. Teams at the front of the field, he said, run $6 million-plus, and further up the grid the sponsorship share is probably closer to 80%. His own operation is currently nearer 60%. He also said sponsors increasingly back individual drivers instead of whole organizations, which strips owners of leverage.
While these figures do not reinforce Hamlin’s claim that 80% of O’Reilly Series drivers pay for their seats, they do offer an important insight to why teams may need several sources of funding to keep their programs running.
What concerns Hamlin is that drivers can find themselves competing for seats based on the money available rather than simply their ability behind the wheel. Kligerman counters by saying that the money rarely comes from just one place, and the outside appearance of a funded or hired driver can be misleading.
Both perspectives recognize that finances influence who gets to race. Their disagreement lies in how that reality should be perceived, and whether Hamlin’s broad estimate adequately captures the complexity of individual deals.
For Kligerman, the answer is clear: the economics of NASCAR’s O’Reilly Series cannot be reduced to a single percentage or a simple distinction between drivers who pay and those who get paid. The financial structure is more complicated than that, and understanding it requires looking beyond the surface of each deal.