Shen Creed said he's not making a dollar racing NASCAR this year let's talk about that welcome back to break hard I'm Matt people on the internet are shocked to learn that drivers are buying rides in the exin series which I thought was a pretty open thing that everybody knew at this point or maybe they just want people to say it publicly so if you watch Saturday's NASCAR exity series race from Darlington you saw Sheldon Creed about to cruise to his first ever NASCAR xinity series Victory after 11 second place finishes move over Dale Jarrett there's a new leader in the clubhouse here for second place finishes Sheldon Creed was in position to do that until there was a caution in those final laps when AJ alinger absolutely destroyed the wall NASCAR held the caution for quite some time and then finally threw it that set up an overtime restart they pitted for new tires Creed goes from first to Third and then on the restart is not able to get back around Cole kuster and Christopher bell bell goes on to win the race Creed finishes third gets out of the car after the race super bummed of course looked like he was going to win his first ever xinity race and then has has this to say I took a chance on myself and and we brought all the money we could I'm literally not even making a dollar this year we got together all the money that we could I'm literally not making a dollar this year and the internet seemed shocked by that is it surprising that he's not making any money yeah absolutely that's slightly surprising but it's not that surprising H when you think about in the grand scheme of things I mean heck when Daniel hrich was there at Joe Gibbs Racing he was only getting paid for top five finishes for creed I'll get into how I think that his you know model sponsorship works out but for people to be surprised that drivers are buying rides in the acend series literally every single person is doing that I mean you starting off we'll start with Sheldon Creed he's buying his ride his teammate Chandler Smith is buying his ride half the people that are rotating through the uh jgr rotating seats are buying their rides I mean John harn's bringing a sponsor over Joe grass buying those seats um Ryan TRX to an extent a little bit there but everybody's buying seats in the accend series Sammy Smith Justin algy Sam Mayer um everybody over at Jo Gibs or at JRM is buying seats over there Brandon Jones perfect example of that Austin Hills buying a seat at uh RCR people are buying seats all around even in the smaller seats at that Jeffrey ard's buying seats Jeff Burton's buying seats Parker redoff buying seats everybody in the experience Ser is buying seats outside of like a Carson Clapp or a Josh Barry when they were down there there's still some people that are getting hired on Talent some people that are working through driver development programs TRD is certainly funding a few drivers on their own where those drivers aren't necessarily buying those seats but for the most part as Brad Perez says on Twitter everybody's buying seats in the xinity series that shouldn't be a shock I think people were shocked by Sheldon saying that he's not making a dollar so let me kind of just lay out how sometimes it works when you bring budget to a team so Sheldon Creed goes out and finds a sponsor he's got a sponsor he's probably got other money coming in from other sources as well maybe there's some family money maybe there's some other money coming in so he takes that budget and presents it to Jo gi's racing and say it's $8 million a year I actually don't know how much money he brought I I know that he brought a lot of money uh so say he's got $68 million and he brings that over to Jo's racing he's like this is my budget for this year and they're like great we can run a A+ program using that $68 million great what about your salary well we can run an a program or we can run an A+ program so Sheldon Creed essentially is not taking a cut out of the budget that he's bringing and instead putting all that money into the race team to hopefully get that first victory in the ex series compete for a championship so we've seen drivers in the um talk about how this model Works where they'll get a budget from a sponsor say they have re as a sponsor we'll use Brandon Jones as an example here and he takes that money and has that $68 million and he's like okay I have this $8 million that I'm going to take to Joe or to Junior Motorsports I need to get paid out of that so I'm going to take 10% or whatever he wants out of that so now he takes that out and then he gives 90% of that budget to the team and they have that to use to run the team for the season he takes out other 10% % and that's what he's going to live off of that's his salary for driving that race car how much drivers want to give out of that budget to the team that's usually sometimes up to them it kind of depends on who your sponsor is and how you have all that laid out but that's typically how something in that range works now there's certainly different setups right there are some drivers that will get paid just based off of race winnings from the team if that's how they have it structured in their contract there's incentives for you know top 10 top five wins stuff like that you have the the Daniel hrich example where he's only getting paid for top five so if he doesn't finish in the top five that weekend he's not getting paid any money he has to wait until the next weekend hope he finishes in the top five and then he gets a cut out of the money for that so that's the underside of how sponsorships and Driver payments are working in the xinity series now there certainly are people that have salar set out in the contract like I have to get paid this amount of money each week and things work out that way but for the most part when it comes to budgets there's guys that aren't really making the money that I think a lot of people think they're probably making there's guys that are making good living don't get me wrong there are definitely guys in the X Series that are making solid livings out of this but when you think about it from Sheldon Creed's standpoint all of the money that he could have taken probably for a salary is going back into the team to try to succeed uh this year and so far he hasn't got that first win but he came closer than he ever has so for people be surprised that drivers are openly saying that they buy rides I'm not sure why they're surprised by that I mean heck William Byron bought a ride at Junior Motorsports Chase Elliott bought a ride at Junior Motorsports when he brought Napa along with him people are buying rides everywhere they go at this point it just kind of is the name of the game if you have a sponsor behind you and there's a good seat open you're buying that ride unless you're part of some sort of driver development program and the team is going to you know fund you to drive that car Connor zillich at JRM track house is you know essentially buying that car for for him and then Connor's put in that car he doesn't necessarily have to bring money along uh with him TRD Cory Heim just kind of goes where TRD wants him to go that's why he's got safe light on the car JBL Yahoo those are all Toyota sponsors that TRD has put together uh for him so that's kind of the difference here you have some guys that have to bring their budget some guys that are in these pipelines and kind of work their way up uh you know going through it Christian NE is actually a perfect example just announced on Saturday he's going to call racing he does not bring a budget with him he's being hired to drive that car COL is going to find sponsors for which of course the 16 is kind of the house car over at col racing right there's a lot of col companies that rotate through that and it's a pretty funded race car so Chris neas doesn't have to bring budget he's going to be paid to drive that car meanwhile you have um Josh Williams over there he brings budget with him that's the reason why he's over there he's not there because K you know was like we're hiring this guy on Talent not saying he's not talented I'm just saying that he brought budget and it made sense for the team financially that's why he's in that race car it's just kind of how the extend series works at this point uh so I'm surprised that people were surprised by it U but yeah for Sheldon to be that honest and open I appreciate it right like it's cool to see the insights and like these guys are struggling like this is very much like make or break for a lot of these guys and they're bringing a lot of money to try to you know impress the team to move up to the cup series um and sometimes it just doesn't work out and sometimes you have heartbreak like Sheldon has and as he said in the pre-race like I'm running out of ways to lose these things I would agree with you but doesn't say that you can't just start repeating those ways again so yeah that's kind of how you know sponsorship was working these days and it's unfortunate but at this moment it's the name of the game especially in the extend series Cup Series you have guys that are still bringing money but a lot more guys are getting hired necessary more necessarily than you know having to bring budget with them so let me know in the comments what you think like And subscribe to the channel follow me on Tik Tok breart Instagram Twitter and Facebook atre cardb