Q: Okay, I see those crews working so hard for the driver. They do the hardest work in the entire NASCAR sport. Without them, the driver would not be able to get the car right. So where do they income come from? Who pays them? NASCAR? The driver? By the way, what about the crew chief?
A: The driver, the crew, the crew chief and everyone building the cars back at the shop are employee's of the team owner. The team owner pays them. He's the boss. They say a *good* boss, (aka team owner) will give all his employees a bonus from the race winnings if they win a race but that's completely up to the discretion of the team owner/boss. The driver always gets a bonus and usually the largest. It's typically in the drivers contract how much of a percantage of race winnings they get. The team owner gets his money from sponsorship dollars, race winnings and a percentage of merchandise like T-shirts and die-cast cars etc.. If they have no sponsor and never win or place well, the team owner won't be in 'business' for very long. When you see or read how the driver won say, $500,000, for winning a race........what that really means is that the team owner/boss won that money! Then he'll give/pay the largest percentage to the driver, say $250,000, then he'll keep some, give the crew bonus checks etc. etc. on down the line.