NASCAR News: Daytona 500 to Have the Biggest Purse in History in 2024

The 2024 Daytona 500 is reported to have the largest purse in the history of the event. Last year the purse was at $26,934,357 which saw the race winner take somewhere between $1.5 – $2 million. With the increase of the purse for the 2024 season, the winnings are only expected to notch a level above. This makes the 66th iteration of The Great American Race one of the most lucrative and cash-rich events in motorsports history.

For this year, the purse is set to $28,035,991, which includes all payouts to teams, three-year charter history, finishing position, duels, and more! The report by Bob Pockrass also revealed that the Xfinity Opener could shell as much as $3,510,021. Alongside this, people, like every year, were taken aback after seeing the relatively low Truck Series purse, which stood at $1,058,336.

Winning prize for the Daytona 500 driver

Historically, this event has been more than just racing. With the hype, exposure and popular culture associated with it, it has become a grand stage for NASCAR drivers to make a memory of their lifetime. Winning the Daytona 500 race elevates a driver’s status but the cash winning that follows is just too good to be true.

Let us understand how the prizes have been distributed in recent history with two milestone years, 2015 and 2020. Back in 2015, it was Joey Logano who won the race and earned $1,581,453 which was averaged at around 9% of the purse that year. The purse announced for that year was $18 million.

Moving forward to 2020, it was Joe Gibbs Racing Denny Hamlin who bagged the prestigious Daytona 500 win. Surprisingly, he bagged a whopping $2.07 million. The value of the purse from 2015-20 saw a big leap, it stood at $23.6 million in 2020. Now with a split of four years, the prize purse has seen another big increase with the 2024 season standing at a mouth-watering figure of &28 million.

Read More: Can Denny Hamlin Prove His Daytona Prowess in Next Gen Era in 2024?

With the announcement of the new purse value for the Daytona 500, NASCAR fans questioned the lucrative offering for Cup Series drivers while Truck and ARCA Series were handed a bitter end of the stick.

Fans react to Daytona 500’s prize purse

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No wonder, the Cup Series drivers will be pumped to get into the thick of the racing after the mega announcement. Going by the thumb rule the Cup Series drivers could make well between $2.5-3 million in winnings but as you drop the level of the Xfinity and Truck, the winnings start to get thin. While the fans were left in awe of the initial prize purse but soon started to compare the winnings across different series. And let’s just say, they were not pleased by the disparity between the series.

One user quickly noticed the huge gap in projected winnings between the Cup Series and the Truck Series, he commented, “How is the Truck series surviving??? @CouchRacerShop”.

Taking a sarcastic dig at NASCAR one user replied, “Arca gets a 20 dollar gift card to Menards and a box of Reese’s”.

Questioning the future of the Craftsman Truck Series another anxious fan wrote, “How is the truck series possibly making it to 2030?”

One particular fans was not a fan of NASCAR putting out a secret ballot for the prize reveal and suggested that they should bring back the marketing appeal, “We need this to be part of the marketing for the race, like it used to be. If there’s one thing Americans understand, it’s money. When we made payouts private information, we lost that intrigue”.

One thing is for certain, the winner of the 66th edition of the Daytona 500 will be going home filthy-rich. Moreover, a huge boost for the team and driver to start off their season on a winning note.

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