NASCAR will pay out the biggest prize purse in the sport's history on Sunday at the Daytona 500.

The purse for the Cup Series opener stands at a staggering $31,045,575 this year, an increase over last year's $30,331,250 and an all-time high for the Great American race.

Of course, that doesn't mean that William Byron got handed a massive cardboard cheque for a neat $30m. In fact, Byron's eventual split of the prize pot almost certainly didn't even get into seven figures.

What's that all about? Well, the NASCAR prize money distribution system means that, to some extent, everybody eats.

How much prize money will the Daytona 500 winner get?

That's a tricky question. It's not that there's no answer, it's more that NASCAR is very, very cagey with that information. We know that last year, the 'race purse payout curve' had the first place finisher at just a shade over 5 per cent (down to just under 0.9 per cent for 40th). But, again, even that doesn't all go to the driver.

While the prize money split is a fairly closely guarded secret, we do know that a decent chunk of the prize money goes to team owners, and some is distributed among team members (pit crew, mechanics, etc).

Make no mistake, even if the Daytona 500 winner 'only' gets, say, half of that 5 per cent payout, that's still about three quarters of a million dollars. It's a huge amount of money. It's just not $31,045,575.

What is the prize money for NASCAR's other series?

Significantly lower, with apologies to our friends in the O'Reilly and Truck Series. The O'Reilly Series will be paying out from a pool of $3,782,120 at Daytona this year, while the Truck Series field will be sharing out $1,276,300 between them.

Oh yeah, one more thing...

Daytona 500 winner might receive $0 prize money

Yep, it's possible that this year's winner might be doing it for the sweet, sweet prize of zero dollars.

This probably won't happen. The chance is pretty slim. But a car running on the Open Exemption Provisional – this year, Jimmie Johnson – is not eligible for race points, playoff points...or prize money.

The good news? If the 50-year-old wins his third Daytona 500 on Sunday, he's probably not going to care a jot about the money.

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