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Making money from the teams and drivers in motorsports photography is a complete non-starter. The teams and drivers expect everything to be given to them for free - they are spoiled by all the fanboy GWCs (guys with cameras) giving them stuff for free. The worst of the GWC species: the bottom feeders who cheerfully contact the teams promising to work for free in return for help with a credential. That's right - these GWCs are willing to give up their weekends, do travel, lodging and food all at their own expense to GIVE AWAY THEIR WORK FOR FREE. Never stopping to think about the food they are taking from another photographer's table.
How do they do it? They "subsidize" the photography with their day jobs and use their holidays and weekends for their hobby at the expense of all of the pros who are scraping by trying to make a living from their photography.
The ONLY thing the pro has that allows him to compete with free is the quality of his work and his commitment but there's an awful lot of people only concerned with price and it is hard to beat free.
Meanwhile the GWC kids himself thinking he'll work for free just to get his foot in the door and then he'll start charging once he's established his credibility. Problem is he's also established what his work is worth and people aren't going to pay his new rates. Once you set a price of free it's awfully hard to convince people to pay you.
Sometimes a team learns their lesson the hard way - the GWC fails to deliver, the image that looked good on Facebook can't be blown up to 12' high for the paddock enclosure, etc. Then, if the pro has managed to live on packets of soup, he gets an offer to work at a much reduced rate because he's now competing with a rate of 0 dollars per hour.
Just in case anyone thinks that anybody is making money in this game - you can count on one hand the number of photographers who are making any profit in a given top level series. Everyone else is losing money if they are using real accounting methods.
Even at the top levels the ONLY way there is money to be made is by working your butt off, having multiple clients per event (to spread out the expenses) and constantly sweating someone undercutting you and stealing a client. Throw in the constant exodus of teams and sponsors and there is zero security only lots of hard work and sleepless nights.
Quick note on credentials and rights: a photography credential to a major event does NOT normally give you the right to sell your pictures. It only gives you editorial rights - the right to use your pictures in illustration of a news story.
In order to profit from sales of your photographs you must also purchase the commercial rights from the series that sanctions the event. In other words a licensing agreement strictly controlling how they are marketed, what items you can sell and the numbers of sales expected - usually at a cost of several thousand dollars for a major series.
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