Heights And Weights Of Nascar Drivers

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It used to be common lore that a Formula 1 driver was a little, lightweight, horse racing jockey sort of guy. Think Stirling Moss, Jackie Stewart or Alain Prost.

Then, however, as the car rules changed and car weights and sizes changed the driver height and weight ceased to matter much anymore. Suddenly, it was all right to be tall like Gerhard Berger, Alexander Wurz, Mark Webber, and even Michael Schumacher was only slightly shorter than these 6 footers. Ayrton Senna was taller than Prost and still beat him. David Coulthard was another 6-footer or more and won lots of races.

KERS Induces Return of the Lightweight Drivers:

NASCAR drivers must weigh 200 pounds to race. If they do not weigh 200 pounds, weights are added until this weight is reached. A NASCAR driver does not have to have a driver's license to race. Drivers must pass a drug test and physical test however. A NASCAR race team will wear out over 15 sets of tires a week. NASCAR is about millions of watching their favorite drivers try to win races and a overall points. What is Nascar driver Colin Braun's height and weight?

But suddenly, a rule change in 2009 led to a return of the advantage given to the short, lightweight drivers: The FIA created a new technological element, known as the Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems, or KERS, without changing another essential factor in the car's makeup. KERS is designed to save energy on braking and reuse it in short power bursts rather than drawing purely on fuel. Sure, but what does that have to do with driver height and weight?

The problem was that the rules of car weights from the pre-KERS time were not changed. That is to say, a Formula 1 car must weigh no more than 605 kilograms, or 1334 pounds, with the driver aboard during a race. Those are the rules. If the car and driver weigh more than that, they are disqualified from the race or race results. That created problems in 2009 because a KERS system weighed some 30 kilograms.

The significance of this is that for a driver to get the most out of his car, a team creates a car with weight to spare. The extra weight is filled up with ballast. The ballast is placed in relevant parts of the car when a driver sets up the car to perform best on each individual circuit. In 2009, therefore, the taller, heavier drivers ended up being at a disadvantage compared to their lighter colleagues - particularly at teams where two drivers of drastically different heights and weights used the same kind of car chassis. So it was that the very short and light Nick Heidfeld had an advantage over the taller and heavier Robert Kubica at the BMW Sauber team.

Top Model F1 Driver Weight Syndrome:

This weight problem led to a situation not seen in the series before. Suddenly, over the winter, almost all of the drivers went on diets and worked out in a way to try to lose as much weight as possible. Nico Rosberg, the Williams driver, dropped from 72 kilograms to 66 kilograms. Kubica dropped from 78 to 72 last year - as he was already too heavy - and then this year dropped to 70 kilograms. Kimi Raikkonen at Ferrari lost 3.5 kilos, Fernando Alonso lost 5 kilos, and even Heidfeld lost some weight going down by 2.5 kilos to weigh only 59 kilos. Jarno Trulli and Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel dropped to 64, 67 and 62.5 kilos. Webber, however, refused to lose weight, and he has been consistently slower than his teammate Vettel.

An Unforeseen Consequence of the Lightweight F1 Driver Syndrome:

Like the top models, F1 drivers found themselves not always in the best of health thanks to their weight loss. During the extreme heat and physical strain of some of the Formula 1 races, a driver can lose up to 5 kilos of weight. At the hottest early race of the season in 2009, Alonso also found himself in another very difficult situation: His water bottle broke and he had nothing to drink throughout the race. Having lost 5 kilos over the winter, then a further 5 kilos or so during the race, and without anything to drink, the Spanish driver collapsed after the race in a state of dehydration.

It is no surprise that the FIA has agreed to increase the minimum car weight in 2010 from 605 kilos to 620 kilos.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. retired at the end of the 2017 Nascar season after nearly two decades in the spotlight as the most famous progeny in the sport. Earnhardt failed to reach Victory Lane last year, but he cemented his spot at the top among fans with his 15^th straight year, winning Nascar’s Most Popular Driver award. He was named on 68% of the votes cast by fans.

Johnson ranked second with total earnings of $19.2 million, as he finished a disappointing 10^th in the final Cup standings. Johnson signed a contract extension with Hendrick Motorsports last year to drive the No. 48 car through at least 2020. The new deal should keep him at the top of driver earnings chart with Earnhardt's retirement.

Rounding out the top five are Kyle Busch ($14.7 million), Denny Hamlin ($14.6 million) and Kevin Harvick ($13.6 million).

The sport’s most valuable team, Hendrick Motorsports, filled its two open driver slots, Earnhardt and Kahne, with 19-year-old William Byron and 24-year-old Alex Bowman. Top drivers used to race well into their 40s, but Johnson and Kevin Harvick are now the oldest in the sport at 42.

One driver who failed to crack the top 12 in 2017 but will shoot up Forbes’ next look at the top-earning drivers is Elliott. He replaced Gordon in the famed No. 24 car in 2016 (Elliott moved to the No. 9 car for 2018 for Hendrick). Elliott didn’t reach the winner’s circle in 2017, but his merchandise flew off the racks and sales ranked second behind only Earnhardt. Elliott signed a four-year contract extension in June with Hendrick that boosts his salary to the mid-seven figures range.

Earnhardt also nabbed another title before taking his talents to the NBC broadcast booth. The 43-year-old recaptured his place as the highest-earning driver in his swansong season after a one-year hiatus where Jimmie Johnson usurped him. Earnhardt earned $22 million in 2017 by Forbes’ count, thanks to Nascar’s highest salary and top merchandise sales.

Earnhardt was Nascar’s top-earner for seven straight years until 2016, when a concussion sidelined him for the final 18 races of the season and Johnson captured his seventh Cup championship, plus the roughly $2 million Cup title bonus (Jeff Gordon was the last driver to surpass Earnhardt before that).

Dale Jr. posted only one top-five finish in 2017, but fans gobbled up his merchandise along each stop on the Nascar circuit. Earnhardt’s No. 88 car commanded nearly $1 million per race from sponsors, pushing his driver salary to the top of the charts. The two-time Daytona 500 winner also generated roughly $4 million from personal endorsement partners like Nationwide, Chevrolet, Goody’s and Wrangler.

Nationwide has been an Earnhardt sponsor since 2008 (it added a primary car sponsorship in 2014). In January, Nationwide announced plans to continue to use Earnhardt as a company spokesman in a multi-year deal.

Earnhardt's estimated career earnings of $410 million from salary and endorsements, as well as his cut of winnings and merchandise sales, rank second all time among drivers. Only Gordon earned more.

Johnson ranked second with total earnings of $19.2 million, as he finished a disappointing 10^th in the final Cup standings. Johnson signed a contract extension with Hendrick Motorsports last year to drive the No. 48 car through at least 2020. The new deal should keep him at the top of driver earnings chart with Earnhardt's retirement.

Rounding out the top five are Kyle Busch ($14.7 million), Denny Hamlin ($14.6 million) and Kevin Harvick ($13.6 million).

Nascar has a bevy of up-and-coming drivers in Kyle Larson, Austin Dillon, Bubba Wallace and Ryan Blaney. But the retirement of Earnhardt, Gordon, Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards, Danica Patrick and Matt Kenseth in recent years leaves a gaping hole in the sport.

Those six drivers all ranked among the top 10 in merchandise sales in 2013. Ratings for the 2018 Daytona 500 on Fox—won by Dillon with Wallace in second—were off 23% compared to the prior year and the lowest ever for Nascar's signature race. Ratings were less than half from a dozen years ago on NBC.

The retirements of the sport’s old guard give team owners a chance to reset salaries, a necessity with sponsorship money off for most cars. The top 12 drivers earned $155 million last year, down 20% from 2009. The total will drop again next year with Earnhardt, Patrick and Kenseth leaving the sport, as well as Kasey Kahne taking a huge pay cut in moving from Hendrick Motorsports to Leavine Family Racing.

Every driver contract is different, but experienced drivers traditionally commanded salaries of roughly one-third of the sponsorship dollars committed to the car. Drivers were also entitled to a cut of race winnings and merchandise.

Sponsor money is off and team owners are cutting the percentage allocated to driver salaries. The car is more important than the driver, and funds are allocated that way. Incoming drivers are getting six-figure salaries with a cut of other revenue, but their total comp tends to be in the low millions, far cry from Nascar's heady days. Incentives are playing a bigger role in contracts more than ever before.