What It Actually Costs to Race Up NASCAR’s Ladder

The NASCAR hard card: Your ticket to race

The beginning of a new year means the start of a new NASCAR season, and weeks before anyone turns up to the race track, anyone who hopes to have a shot in the sport that year must purchase a hard card.

At its most basic, a hard card is an annual pass that provides a certain level of access to all NASCAR events during a season. Drivers, team owners, crew members, full-season media, and officials all need to purchase their hard cards each year; when they turn up to the track, all they need to do is flash their hard card, and they'll be let into areas restricted to NASCAR-sanctioned personnel.

The cost and level of access for each hard card differs, but Perez tells me that NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series drivers — the feeder series step before a promotion to the NASCAR Cup Series ‘big leagues’ — must pay $3,600 at the start of each season in order to purchase the card, even if they only intend to compete in a single race and even if their first race of the season is still months away.

That was the case for Brad Perez this year. While he was on hand to replace an ill JJ Yeley at the Circuit of The Americas in late February, his first scheduled event behind the wheel wasn't until late March, when he competed in the NFPA 250 at Martinsville Speedway.

For a driver who may not know when his first ride of the season will be, Perez admitted that it can be difficult to have that $3,600 on hand when NASCAR requires it.

While it can be easy to think of racing as a rich man's sport, that's not the case for most of the drivers who take the green flag on the weekends. I've been covering 29-year-old Perez's career since he began his journey up the NASCAR Cup Series ladder back in 2021. The son of Puerto Ricans and and Dominican immigrants, Perez discovered NASCAR back in 2001, but it was completely foreign to his family and friends. They not only didn't understand stock car racing, and they had no idea how to support young Brad's career because the traditional route — i.e., paying for opportunities with ample sums of family money — was unavailable to them.

To make his dreams come true, Perez worked all throughout high school and college. Every dollar went directly into karting, then later into Spec Miata racing. He lived at home to save up and learned how to wrench on his own machines to keep costs down. As soon as he was able, he moved to NASCAR's Charlotte, North Carolina hub and started working at race shops in whatever capacity he could, just to make sure people knew his name.

And the relationships he started forging all those years ago can pay off in surprising ways, like they did in 2026: Brad Perez knew that the Young's Motorsports team had deemed its No. 42 car a “revolving door car” — or, a car it would provide to any driver who could find the sponsorship to race in it. He knew the owners, Tyler and Randy Young. He knew they'd only officially sold the ride for five races in 2026.

So Perez came to them with a proposal. He had already locked down sponsorship for two races, and he'd contest those races with Young's. He also believed he'd be able to organize more races with the team. If the team paid for his hard card, he'd join the team as a crew member and work for them until he'd worked off the $3,600. Young's agreed.

“I worked off my payment,” Perez told FanAmp. “Whenever I do work for them now, they pay me. And [the hard card] allows me to get other opportunities, so I can work the Truck race, I can work an ARCA race.” In other words, he's able to enter the garages for any of NASCAR's four major series — Cup, O’Reilly, Trucks, and ARCA — in order to pick up additional work. That's as good for exposure as it is for his wallet.

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The ride: $40,000 to get you behind the wheel

But what exactly does it cost to compete in one single NASCAR O’Reilly Series race?

According to Perez, the answer is between $40,000 and $45,000 to secure a seat in a car expected to finish 25th or lower in the final running order.

“Some people get it cheaper. I've gotten cheaper deals,” Perez said. “I've also gotten the more expensive situation.”

Based on the average cost of crews, fuel, tires, spare parts, brakes, travel, hotel rooms, and all the little expenses that add up throughout a weekend, Perez believes $40,000 is the absolute minimum a mid-road team can charge without taking a loss. Go cheaper, and a driver risks racing in poorly prepared or used equipment. Find a more expensive seat, and you'd better be prepared to back up your money with results.

On the lower end, Perez estimates it's possible to secure a seat for as little as $20,000. But to race at one of the top-tier O’Reilly teams, like JR Motorsports or Joe Gibbs Racing, a driver needs $100,000 to $150,000 to race. And all costs jump at major events like Daytona, which naturally incur more costs. There, a mid-tier ride is more likely to fall between $60,000 and $70,000.

But those are just single-event costs. In order to compete for an entire season with a 25th-place-or-lower car, Perez estimates it would cost $1.3 to $1.4 million. The overall fee per race then drops to around $30,000, but the security of a steady paycheck all season long helps compensate for that.

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The ‘crash clause’: Protection in case you wreck

So, what happens if you crash?

“It's complicated,” Perez says with a laugh.

Some teams may not only charge a driver $40,000 for a race, but they'll ask for an additional $10,000 to $15,000 as part of a ‘crash clause.’ That crash clause money needs to be paid to the team up front; if the driver wrecks, then that money is there for repairs. If the driver keeps his car clean, the team returns the money.

In other instances, a team may simply raise the overall price of a race seat in order to build in funding for repairs.

It's not mandatory; Perez says he's never been charged a crash clause fee but that he completely understands why some teams might find it necessary with a crash-prone driver.

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The sponsorship: Plan ahead because cash—up front—is king

Whether a driver is bringing the sponsorship to pay for a $20,000 ride or a $120,000 ride, the money they bring is funneled directly back into the race team — and the driver who can provide that money in cash is always going to be a favorite compared to the driver who operates on promises.

“[Teams] can plan ahead if they get more money up front,” Perez explained. “It helps them cover their bills. The gear bill has to get paid, the pit crews have to get paid, everything has to get paid in X amount of time. So the upfront money person wins every time.

“So definitely money up front always helps — and doing more races, too.”

In effect, when Perez races, he has to bring enough sponsorship to not only pay for the use of a race car but to also cover some of the costs associated with maintaining a pit crew and organizing travel. Without that money, the car wouldn't race, and the folks who work on that car would be laid off.

Because of that, Perez said most sponsorship deals need to be completed in July of the previous year. He can then take that funding to a team who can use the money as an investment in its future.

“By the time we get to November, most deals are signed already,” Perez told FanAmp. The NASCAR season generally ends the first week of November; as soon as NASCAR distributes the purse money for the final race of the year, teams receive no additional income outside of sponsor dollars.

“The people at the shop don't really get paid unless a deal has been signed. If the deal's not signed, these people get laid off,” Perez said.

Of course, there is flexibility within the season. Drivers may see a deal disintegrate in the face of an economic upheaval, leaving the door open for other drivers with sponsorship to organize a ride at the last minute. A team may also struggle to find a driver for a less-desirable race, which makes it possible for a driver to get a better deal on purchasing the seat. But in general, the farther out a driver can find funding, the sooner he can sign with a team, and the more likely it is for that team to keep the lights on.

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Make your money race for you

Not all NASCAR teams are created equal, and not all sponsorship opportunities are worth taking — that makes figuring out how to strike a balance here challenging.

For some drivers, gaining experience in racing conditions is more important than trying to fight for a win. In that case, Perez said it may make sense to find a cheaper ride, and there are teams at the rear of the field who are willing to make cars available for as little as $20,000 per race.

But there's a trade-off. Those cheaper cars are often more prone to mechanical faults or poor performances that end up leaving a driver feeling like they didn’t get the experience they needed. So, in some instances, it might make sense to save up for a more expensive seat at a team further up the running order.

Top-level rides at the $120,000 per race level may generally guarantee a higher level of professionalism and reliability (though, of course, nothing in motorsport is ever perfect). However, if the driver doesn't have the experience to make the most of that opportunity, then they may squander their shot at being taken seriously in the NASCAR paddock.

Sponsors are similar. According to Perez, a good sponsor is one willing to communicate transparently about their expectations and the realities of racing. And the driver who accepts that sponsorship should feel capable of providing some kind of return on their investment.

He used a hypothetical shoe sponsor as an example. He could charge a shoe sponsor $60,000 to appear on his car. If that company expected $60,000 in shoe sales as a direct result of its involvement in NASCAR, then that's probably a poor match; Perez admitted that it's impossible to make that kind of promise because the conversion of visibility to sales is limited.

That's why Perez opts for a different approach: He hops on Google Maps and checks out local companies around various NASCAR tracks. If he's able to find, say, a PVC pipe company with a handful of employees that seems to have a strong profit margin, then he'll reach out with a different kind of experience.

“The easiest partners to deal with are the ones that have a ton of profit margin,” he said. “They don't really care about the marketing aspect; they just want to have some fun.” Those kinds of companies often deal directly with corporate buyers and have little need to spend a ton of money on marketing to the Average Joe. Instead, Perez can offer that company a once-in-a-lifetime experience full of pit passes, hauler visits, and driver meet-and-greets.

Now that Perez has been chasing sponsors for around six years, he has countless strong financial relationships to fall back on should an opportunity arise or fall apart. He understands what each partner is looking for when they sponsor a NASCAR race, and he therefore has a much stronger sense of what proposals are most likely to be given a thumbs-up from the marketing department.

“They run a business,” he said of his sponsors. “They know exactly how much they could [sponsor a race for] and how much they can't do something for, and I'm no different.” When one of those partners expresses interest in a race they may not be able to afford, Perez can direct them to other races that are better aligned with both their goals and their budgets. In instances where a prospective sponsor reaches out, Perez is happy to either accept or decline their offer based on both the services he feels he can provide as well as the values he feels both he and the brand share. And in cases where there's a misalignment, he hasn't hesitated to pass on that opportunity to a fellow driver.

“It sucks to say no, especially when you're part-time,” he said, “but if I don't align with something, it's a disservice to them and then it's a disservice to me."

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The mindset: Prepare yourself for the rat race

The reality of chasing sponsorship can be as time consuming as it is brutal. While he's gone from a cold-pitch email to a signed contract with a sponsor in as little as a week, Brad Perez says it's more likely that the negotiation process will last months and require multiple layers of outreach.

First, he has to convince a brand to open his email. Then, he has to convince them to care enough about who he is to be able to sell them on the idea of sponsoring a car. Once there's some rapport, it's time to talk about the logistics of racing sponsorship — how much it costs, what sponsors can expect, and what Perez needs in return. In many cases, each step of the process needs to be approved by the various levels of a company's chain of command. It's only once the money materializes that Perez can actually nail down a contract with a race team.

He pointed out a deal he inked with Sendero Provisions that featured not only a title sponsorship but a bespoke clothing line. Because of the level of involvement, that deal took over 18 months to organize — and while Perez has nothing but praise for the end result, he also acknowledged that it was a major commitment for both the brand itself and for Perez, who deals with every step of this process himself.

Perez also admitted that the sponsorship rat race has transformed the way he sees motorsport — and the way he races.

“I don't race people as hard as I should be racing them, because I just don't want to crash. I don't want to screw stuff up,” he admitted. “I think I probably would've taken more aggressive opportunities early on in my career.”

That's because Perez is now intimately familiar with everything it takes to get to the track. He knows how much money he brought to the table and can calculate, roughly, how much money he could cost the team by making contact with another driver. And he knows the same thing is true for the people who helped his rivals get to the track.

“When I'm behind somebody and there's a chance I can wreck them, I think about all the people that are working on that car, and it does kind of screw me up a bit,” he said. During his most recent race in Gateway, for example, he was involved in a three-car collision with drivers Joey Gase and Josh Bilicki. He felt so guilty about the damage he potentially caused to Bilicki's No. 07 that he brought donuts to their shop on Monday morning as an apology.

“To me, I felt like it was a racing incident, but I screwed up a little bit,” he said of the incident. “I hate that I wrecked their car regardless of what the outcome was. And I feel like most other people, if that situation occurred, just wouldn't care. Unfortunately, I do care.”

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The driver ROI: Can you make a living in NASCAR?

Whether it’s $50,000 to run just one race in a season or over $1M to make every race count, I had to ask Perez one more pressing question: can a part-time driver like him make any money?

“I don't necessarily make a living doing this yet,” Perez explained — though he clarified that he does make something. “The amount of money that I make doing this is probably the equivalent of working another part-time job.”

When he's behind the wheel, Perez says he tries to make $1,000, but the reality of actually earning money depends on the nature of the sponsorship deal he's able to strike.

“I'll try to sell a sponsorship on top of my sponsorship to make a little bit of money, but sometimes it just doesn't happen,” he said. “There have been a couple times this year where I made nothing, but that's why I have my other jobs.”

Throughout our conversation, Perez referred time and again to the importance of the relationships he's forged in the NASCAR paddock. He treats his sponsors, team owners, and crew members like family because he knows how much work it takes just to get your foot in the door. Because of that, he respects that their investment can come with financial limits.

“I want to give the team the most amount of money possible,” he told me. He also wants to make sure that his sponsors get what they pay for. The income he receives from actually racing isn't as important as the simple fact that he gets to race, period.

“What makes it worth it to keep doing this — all this negotiation, this relationship building, the administrative nonsense, the financial stress. What makes it worthwhile to you?” I asked.

Perez laughed and candidly replied, “I don't know.”

Give him a moment to think, though, and he has countless answers. With more practice and more time behind the wheel, Brad Perez believes he's capable of a victory. But it's the people — the sponsors and team owners — who have really made this worthwhile.

“Some of the sponsors that I've met, I would consider [to be] people who would go to my wedding,” he said. “They made my dreams come true. Any time I get to go on the race track, it still feels a little surreal.

“There's a time in my life that I'm never going to get to do this again. It's good to appreciate it while it's happening, regardless of how [much] suffering it is.

“These relationships do make my life better, and I think my life is better for them regardless of if I miss a couple birthdays or whatever. I would still rather be here than having to do whatever I did 10 years ago.”

If that means piecing together race deals and spending his off weekends crewing on other cars, well — that's all part of what it costs to live the dream.