Racing is expensive. Over the last year, there’s been plenty of chatter about just how expensive it is to compete at NASCAR’s highest level. Some of the costs related to the teams’ Cup Series operations have even come to light, now that 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports have taken NASCAR to court for “monopolistic practices“. Even Dale Jr. hasn’t dared to venture into the sports’ highest level full-time with JR Motorsports, partly because of the costs involved.

But what about the Xfinity Series? Recently, crew chief/engineer Aedan McHugh laid out what it actually takes to fund a competitive operation in NASCAR’s second tier. And let’s just say that the revelations were pretty eye-opening.

How much does it take to run an Xfinity car?

McHugh takes us through the breakdown. For 2025, most NASCAR Xfinity Series races come with a purse of about $1.65 million. A couple of events pay a little more. For example, the inaugural Mexico City race and the championship weekend were both at roughly $2.15 million, and historic tracks such as Daytona naturally topped the list with the purse just under $3.8 million. Altogether, the seasons’ posted awards add up to about $57.6 million, and that doesn’t even include the year and points fund.

If you spread that money evenly across the 38 available entries each week, it would work out to around $1.5 million per team for the full season. Broken down over 33 races, that’s roughly $46,000 per race for an average team, though in reality, frontrunners make more and backmarkers make less. Still, it gives a decent idea of the typical weekly payout.

A team definitely needs an engine, and most teams in the second-tier series of NASCAR lease theirs. Chevrolet teams use either ECR or Hendrick Motorsports engines, Ford teams get theirs from Roush Yates, and Toyota teams rely on Joe Gibbs Racing. Price is very high, but a season lease usually runs around $800,000, or roughly $24,000 per race.

Smaller teams also rent transmissions and rear gears rather than owning them. A typical weekend rental runs about $1500 for a transmission and $25 for gears, adding up to just over $44,000 for the season or around $1300 per race. It may seem like a lot of numbers floating around, but it is important to understand the vast difference between owning a team and renting a team.

Tires remain one of the biggest ongoing costs. Goodyear sets are about $2500 each, and teams use 4 to 7 sets per weekend. Over a full season, the allotment comes to 188 sets at a total cost of about $470,000. Getting all those tires, wheels, and the pit box to each race is another expense; haulers like Champion Tire and Wheel charge around $95,000 a year for transport.

In fact, Denny Hamlin, who is in the middle of a very big feud with NASCAR, commented on the cost. He said, “It costs us $18 million a year to put a car on the racetrack… we’ve asked NASCAR to just cover our cost and the answer has been repeatedly no.” This is just the costs endured by the NASCAR Cup Series alone.

And when you add all of this up, it takes roughly $4 million a year, about $121,000 per race, to keep a mid-pack Xfinity Series team running at the most basic level. That budget covers the essential operating cost and still leaves around $650,000 for things like shop rent or mortgage payments, utilities, parts, and the initial investment needed to get the team running.

Even with such a lean setup, the team would still need to bring in at least $2.5 million a season through sponsorships or funded drivers just to stay afloat. There’s almost no question in a budget like this. One bad stretch of crashes or mechanical failures and the whole operation can run out of money in the Xfinity Series.

What are NASCAR teams’ biggest expenses?

Running a NASCAR team isn’t for the weak, especially when it comes to the money. Team owners are constantly chasing sponsorships just to keep their operations going. That pressure is a big reason why teams have pushed NASCAR for a larger share of TV revenue and why 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports are now locked in an antitrust battle with the governing body.

To understand what exactly drives these massive expenses, Joe Gibbs Racing president Dave Alpern, apart from reflecting on JGR’s toughest season, spells it out in a recent interview.

He said, “People and parts. Those two would be our top two [expenses] by a good bit. Obviously, people are our most valuable asset. Coach [Gibbs] says at all times that you win with people. We got great people. We got a lot of people, and that includes drivers as well. Second would be parts, which include really everything we have to buy or build to put a car together and send our cars to the race track. So, we have eight teams in two different series. Obviously, there’s travel and there’s our facility. But there’s quite a bit that goes into those.”

In short, the bill is enormous. Court filings from the ongoing lawsuit have also revealed just how tough the financial picture is. Chartered teams reportedly earned between $7 million and $18 million per car for sponsorship, yet their books show an average loss of $2.2 million per race. NASCAR itself paid out roughly $670 million to tracks and teams across 2023 to 2024 while averaging about $340 million in profit.

And the most striking detail is that there are only three teams that turned a profit in 2024, and just one of them made more than $150,000 per car. Another team admitted it lost $10 million per car. This reflects a deeper problem that NASCAR and the teams are trying to solve, and with the court date set to December 1, it can be said with certainty that team owners will definitely be keeping tabs.