Sprint Cup purses down as NASCAR shifts money to XFINITY, Trucks

Sprint Cup Series teams appear to be racing for just a little bit less money in 2015 as NASCAR has quietly increased the purses for its two national developmental series while Sprint Cup purses have dropped by a tick this year. NASCAR Chairman Brian France said last year that NASCAR would consider giving Xfinity (formerly Nationwide) Series and Camping World Truck Series teams a bigger portion of the new television deal that went into effect this year. That is what NASCAR has done, although it won't say by how much. It never announced the change, but it did confirm to ESPN.com that that was the case when asked about the change in the purses after the first four races.

In comparing the purses for the first four tracks to what the purses for those tracks' races were last year, the only Sprint Cup race to have an increase in purse was the Daytona 500. It certainly wasn't much of an increase at $24,408, virtually nothing (up 0.1 percent) when considering the purse was $19.8 million. The rest have gone down, none by more than $98,000 – the purses for the three races since Daytona have been between $5 million and $6.5 million — for an overall season drop of 0.2 percent for the first four races. Xfinity races, though, are up 9.1 percent with increases of $60,000 to $155,000 per race; Xfinity purses this year generally are $1.1 million-$1.5 million (the opener was $2.66 million). The truck race at Daytona was up 16.4 percent to $806,373, and that was for a 32-truck field instead of a 36-truck field. There was no Atlanta truck race last year with which to compare the earlier purse. ESPN.com