Denny Hamlin says eight of every 10 drivers in NASCAR's O'Reilly Auto Parts Series are paying for their rides. He said it on the Oct. 7 episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, about 44 minutes in, during a segment on Sheldon Creed's move to Sam Hunt Racing.
"The unfortunate truth is that 80% of those drivers in the Saturday races are paying some sum of money to the team owner to drive those cars," Hamlin said.
He didn't name a driver or a team, didn't put a dollar figure on "some sum," and didn't say where the 80% came from. The phrase covers a lot of ground: a family check, a personal sponsor, a share of the operating budget. Applied to the 38 cars NASCAR listed for the Oct. 17 race at Phoenix, his number works out to about 30 drivers.
How Hamlin described the market
Hamlin, who drives for Joe Gibbs Racing in the Cup Series and co-owns 23XI Racing, laid out the transaction as he sees it. A team owner asks a driver, "All right, well, how much do you got?" A rival team says it will "do it for a half a million less." The driver goes wherever the money works, and drivers "just keep bouncing around based off of whatever the price is that week."
He called it the most solid series NASCAR has from a fan's point of view, "but I'm telling you it is the most fragile when it comes to financial."
Cup teams have charters, which became $100 million assets with a guaranteed starting spot and a revenue share attached. The O'Reilly Series has no charter system, so an O'Reilly team has no equivalent to fall back on.
Four owners and a domino
Hamlin named the owners he says field "all the decent running cars": Sam Hunt, Ryan Sieg, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Joe Gibbs, his own Cup boss. "Any one of those dominoes fall and that series looks like ARCA," he said, then added Richard Childress Racing's two cars to the list.
The Phoenix results mostly support him, with two exceptions. Eight of the top 10 finishers drove for JR Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, Richard Childress Racing or Sam Hunt Racing. The other two, runner-up Sam Mayer and fourth-place Corey Day, drove for Haas Factory Team and Hendrick Motorsports, neither of which Hamlin mentioned. Sieg's own RSS Racing cars finished 23rd and 25th, a lap down.
The Creed deal
NASCAR announced on Oct. 3 that Creed, then the series points leader by 11 over Justin Allgaier, will drive Sam Hunt Racing's No. 26 Toyota on a multiyear deal starting in 2027. He replaces Dean Thompson, who moves to Haas Factory Team as it expands to three cars. Creed piled up 15 runner-up finishes before his first O'Reilly win, and all three of his wins have come this season.
His explanation for leaving Haas's No. 00 was one sentence: "business has to make sense and that overrules results and performance on track sometimes." The announcement lists no salary, no sponsor figures and no term beyond "next season and beyond." Hunt referred to partners and to the deal helping Creed off the track, without numbers.
On the podcast, one host said Creed was "currently having to pay money to be in his ride," and the segment framed the Sam Hunt deal as a driver willing "to step back and make a salary versus pay for a potentially better ride." Neither point appears in NASCAR's announcement, and nobody on the episode said where the information came from.
The title fight has turned on him since. At Phoenix, Creed shut his engine off to save fuel under a Stage 1 caution and the car wouldn't refire. NASCAR said the ignition problem cost him three laps, and he got one back. He finished 32nd and fell from first to fourth in the standings, 59 points behind race winner Jesse Love.
The series runs at Talladega on Oct. 24, and the championship is decided at Homestead-Miami on Nov. 7. Sam Hunt Racing says it will announce the rest of its 2027 driver and sponsor lineup later.
Is buying a seat a fair price of admission to NASCAR's second tier, or should a points leader never have to pay to keep his ride?
Sources: Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin, "Las Vegas: 'We Took Our Eye Off the Ball'" (Oct. 7, 2026, segment beginning at 42:10); NASCAR announcement of Creed's Sam Hunt Racing deal (Oct. 3); NASCAR entry list, Phoenix; NASCAR report on Creed's Phoenix ignition failure; official NASCAR results, Timberland PRO 200 (Oct. 17).
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