In almost every big sport, there are strict rules about money. NFL and the NBA have salary caps. These rules stop the richest teams from buying all the best players. But NASCAR does not have a rule like this. Big teams with the most money can spend whatever it takes to hire the fastest drivers and the smartest car builders. Halfway through the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, a pattern has made itself very clear. Drivers like Tyler Reddick, Denny Hamlin, and Chase Elliott are winning almost everything.
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To understand exactly how bad the gap is, just look at the numbers. Over the last five years, just three teams Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, and Team Penske, have completely dominated the sport. Out of the roughly 180 points races run between 2021 and 2025, these four teams combined to win over 120 of them. That means just three organizations are taking home about two-thirds of all the trophies every single year. So far in 2026, they are continuing that same trend.
Fans are getting upset. Now, NASCAR’s top boss is finally talking about it. Someone recently put the obvious question to him. With the sport’s richest teams able to spend whatever it takes to hire the best drivers, the best pit crews, and the best personnel, is there any kind of cap in place to keep things competitive?
“Right now there’s no cap,” O’Donnell said flatly on Bussin’ With The Boys.
He did say that most of the garage wants one. Around 70 percent of Cup teams are in favor. But the wealthy teams that are winning all the races do not want one, and he pointed to Major League Baseball as the perfect example.
“I think it happens, right? … [like] this in baseball right now, right, with, you know, the Dodgers,” O’Donnell said.
The team with the biggest bank account and the most trophies has absolutely no reason to vote to limit their own power. The top NASCAR teams feel the same way. They want to keep their massive advantage.
“We don’t want to see where three organizations win every single race,” O’Donnell said. “That’s not good for the fans.”
According to a joint financial study conducted by the race teams during their recent charter negotiations, running a NASCAR team in competition costs around $20 million a year. Standard NASCAR payouts cover maybe $11 to $12 million of that. The rest comes from sponsorships and, increasingly, from the other businesses these team owners run on the side. That second part is exactly where a spending cap falls apart.
“It’s complicated,” O’Donnell said, “because a lot of these guys are in different businesses. They’ve got different entities that are involved in helping fund the race team, so it would be hard to police.”
He is right. The biggest teams in NASCAR are not just race teams anymore. They have technology divisions, licensing operations, and investment arms that funnel money back into the racing side. Figuring out where the business ends and the race team begins is not straightforward. A cap with no enforcement mechanism is just a suggestion.
NASCAR has tried to close the gap another way. The Next Gen car, which every team has raced since 2022, ended the era of wealthy teams building their own custom parts. Now everyone buys from the same approved vendors. A Hendrick Motorsports car and a Spire Motorsports car roll off the same spec sheet. That wiped out one of the biggest financial edges that top teams used to hold.
The new charter agreement through 2031 helped too. Teams now collect 35 to 40 percent of NASCAR’s $7.7 billion television deal, up from 25 percent before. The lowest-earning chartered team used to take home around $5 million a year. That floor is now closer to $8.5 million. For smaller operations, that is not nothing.
Charter values show how much the business has changed. Buying a single charter spot on the grid now costs close to $100 million. Five years ago, that number would have seemed impossible.
But better finances across the board do not automatically mean better competition at the front. O’Donnell knows that too.
“As the sport evolves, we gotta make sure that we put on the most competitive races,” he said. “We gotta look at how we balance that.”
A spending cap that 70 percent of the garage supports still does not exist, because the 30 percent with all the leverage does not need one. That math is not changing anytime soon.