DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The Daytona 500 is more than just the biggest and most prestigious race in NASCAR. It’s also the richest.

For as long as the Daytona 500 has been stock car racing’s pre-eminent event, it has also boasted a very rich purse throughout the field. And this year, the prize purse for The Great American Race is once again the richest it has ever been.

As shared by Fox Sports, the total purse for the 2025 Daytona 500 is a whopping $30,331,250, with that number encompassing the total prize pool available to the 40 car field. The number sets a new record, up from over $28 million a year ago, and brings the Daytona 500 purse past the $30 million mark for the very first time.

As an illustration of how impressive that number is, the two support races from NASCAR’s other two national touring series — the Xfinity Series and Craftsman Truck Series — are set to pay out just $3,762,952 and $1,262,900 respectively to their starting fields.

For perspective’s sake, the inaugural Daytona 500 in 1959, won by Lee Petty, paid out $53,050 to the field to establish the race as NASCAR’s biggest event. By the time CBS Sports carried the first live flag-to-flag broadcast of the Daytona 500 in 1979, the purse had grown to $538,330, crossing the million dollar mark for the first time in 1985. 

By the new millennium and CBS Sports’ final Daytona 500 broadcast in 2000, the purse had grown to $7,646,975 and more than doubled over the next decade.