2-Headed Monster: Is $1 Million Prize Enough for Drivers & Fans To Care About In-Season Challenge?

Did you know that NASCAR is implemented an in-season challenge this year? If not, don’t worry. You’re not the only one who forgot.

After all, the challenge’s winner is awarded just $1 million, which is chump change to some drivers, but does that mean they shouldn’t care? Two Frontstretch writers decided they have all the answers this week.

This Is Not the Way To Spend $1 Million

I am all for NASCAR injecting money into the sport. And although $1 million doesn’t have the same spending power it did years ago, it’s still more money than in my bank account — and many people’s for that matter.

Pretend you’re trying to explain one of the next five races to a casual fan. You have to explain stages, the choose cone, pit road penalties, points and the playoffs. Now throw this $1 million in-season challenge bracket into the mix.

If you confuse said casual fan, will they become a typical fan, cheering for their favorite driver, going to races, tuning in to watch on TV or listen on the radio, and read articles from their favorite websites? No.

Speaking from personal experience, one of the reasons I do not religiously follow basketball is because of the fouls. Even as a graduate of a basketball-loving university, most of the time when a referee would blow a whistle signaling a foul, my immediate reaction was, “What’d he do?” To this day, I usually don’t know.

The five racetracks in the challenge are all widely different. From the drafting-style EchoPark Speedway to the Chicago street course, to the road course of Sonoma Raceway to the concrete 1-mile Dover Motor Speedway and to the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway, these five races all have marketability.

Yet we’re reducing that by injecting this in-season challenge into those races. To boot, Shane van Gisbergen, who is going to the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, is not even a contestant in this bracket. He will be a favorite at Chicago and Sonoma. So, he could win the race, earning more playoff points that could help him win the overall championship … yet he’s not eligible for the bracket?

All the teams in the NCAA Tournament and stick-and-ball sports playoffs have a chance to win the title. Not all Cup full-time drivers have that chance in this bracket. Huh?!

Do we really care? If ratings and attendance don’t improve in these five races, then we’ve potentially confused some fans while not attracting new ones. That isn’t business savvy.

So, what do we do with the $1 million? It ought to help the teams.

Can we create another bonus program like the Xfinity Fastest Lap?

Here’s an idea: how about the Kevin Harvick Lead Lap Award? Harvick has the most lead-lap finishes in Cup history. So, for each race, award the last driver who finishes on the lead lap $25,000. Take the remaining $100,000 and award it to the driver who earned the award the most.

Watch how fast drivers and teams will strategize to stay on the lead lap. At Pocono Raceway, dirty air was the key word. More crew chiefs might be willing to gamble to stay on the lead lap. At short tracks, drivers would race harder to stay on the lead lap. The award might also shine a light on some of the drivers and teams who struggled, another talking point for NASCAR’s broadcast partners.

Or take the $1 million and divide it amongst Cup drivers who compete in NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series events. The Cup drivers probably do not need the money, but those racetracks all could benefit from the Cup drivers competing in their events.

Imagine what a Cup driver competing in Grundy County Speedway’s season-ending Bettenhausen Memorial 100 would do for attendance, merchandise, concessions, etc. The possibilities are endless and would reconnect NASCAR with grassroots racing, something the fanbase would love: seeing their favorite NASCAR driver at their local racetrack.

That idea could be another way for the broadcast partners to connect with the fans. Pre-race, the announcers could talk to a driver about his time competing at said local racetrack. And like SRX, this could be a way for NASCAR to showcase those racetracks, hopefully benefitting all involved as well.

We’ll know in five weeks if this in-season challenge has paid dividends. Count me as a dubious one though. I wouldn’t have known how it works without reading this article. Did Amazon Prime Video mention it? There are better ways to spend the prize money, and this one is confusing. I won’t be filling out a bracket. – Mark Kristl

It Absolutely Is, With One Caveat

The Winston Million was started in 1985. Back in that time the winner of the Daytona 500 was awarded $185,500. Darrell Waltrip won the Cup championship that year and pocketed $1,318,375 for the entire season.

If you look at the cumulative rate of inflation from 1985 to 2025, a million dollars now is the equivalent of $333,784 back then. Just looking at the raw numbers, it would appear that a grand prize of $1 million today is really a virtual pittance compared to what it was worth 40 years ago when the “magical” million dollar number came up on the radar of NASCAR. However, if we take a little different look at it, the number is a significant amount.

First off, the environment that the Cup teams race in now is completely different from 1985. Most anyone who follows the sport knows the parameters around the lawsuit between 23XI Racing/Front Row Motorsports and NASCAR.

Most everything about that lawsuit stems from the development of the Race Team Alliance in 2014. In an effort to make the monies that were distributed to the teams more equitable, the RTA was formed to negotiate various things with NASCAR and split the proceeds across all of the teams. That insured that the less competitive teams were given more value for the monies they invested while all teams ended up receiving more return on their investments than they had been.

With the proceeds from media deals, television rights, sponsorships, charters, merchandise and racetrack shares adding up to so much money, the difference between the organizations who finish in the top spots and the teams that simply race week in and week out to complete the field is not near what it used to be.

There are only a couple of ways that the top performers can make some real extra money over what everyone is making. One of the big ones is going to be the million dollars awarded to the winners of the In-Season Challenge.

For years, the All-Star Race was touted for paying a million dollars to win. The dirty little secret that was not shared was that everyone that participates in the race gets prize money.

The second place finisher scores over $600,000. When you look at the relatively small difference between those two positions, the impact of the million really isn’t that dramatic. There is a difference with the In-Season Challenge. This truly is a winner-take-all event. The driver who advances through four of the rounds of the challenge but loses out in the final race will take home bupkis. NASCAR has finally come around and realized the farce of the advertisement of the million to win All-Star Race.

While the idea of a million dollars to the winner is significant when it is considered under the auspice that no one else in the event makes a dime, there is still one more point that could really make the challenge exciting.

If you want to see the drivers truly drive like something depends on them advancing in the challenge, make the drivers put up their own money.

With 32 drivers in the challenge, if the million dollars is divided equally among all of the participants, they would each have to place a bet on themselves of $31,250. That would be enough money to really make a driver buckle down and take some chances when the rubber hit the road after the final pit stop of each event.

The fact that they are only competing against one driver in each round will make it very possible that anyone can manage to advance, barring mechanical failure, by being overly aggressive. That is the kind of beating-and-banging racing where drivers lay it all on the line that everyone who follows the sport wants.

Looking at the dollars, while they aren’t as big as they were in 1985 in relative dollars, the fact that they are only going to the winner makes the amount of a million significant for this event. The only thing that would make it even more exciting would be putting the drivers’ own money on the line. – Mike Neff