Scoring System in 1974 NASCAR Winston Cup. Full Explanation and Final Championship Standings
When copying or using this text and calculations, it is essential to include a link to this article and the author's name: Tim Skorenko.
Background
The point system that was in place in NASCAR in 1972 and 1973 primarily aimed for stability. Most of the points drivers earned were not based on how high they finished but on how many laps they completed. Thus, it was technically more advantageous to drive slowly but complete as many laps as possible. The "win or bust" principle was a losing strategy; one could win the championship simply by participating in all races and consistently finishing.
In 1972, this principle didn't greatly disrupt the championship: Bobby Allison and Richard Petty fiercely competed and dominated throughout the season, with 10 and 8 victories respectively.
The 1973 Winston Cup clearly highlighted the shortcomings of a point system designed for stability. Benny Parsons became the champion with just one victory, consistently finishing in the Top-5. Interestingly, during the first third of the season, James Hylton was leading, even though he didn't win any races that year and ultimately finished in 4th place. The third-place finisher in the championship was a driver who didn't win a single race and hadn't even come in second place once, Cecil Gordon.
In summary, it was dull. Organizers needed to urgently increase the value of winning.
And if it had been a championship from any other part of the world, everything would have been fine. They could have borrowed the 9-6-4-3-2-1 system from Formula 1 (especially since they were already using it for the manufacturers' championship) or the 15-12-10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 system from MotoGP. But that's not how NASCAR operates; they've never taken the easy route.
Instead, they came up with something utterly bizarre, something that had never been used anywhere else and was completely incomprehensible to most viewers. Even Richard Petty himself later said that he won the championship, but he had no idea how.
Why?
From 1949 to 1967, NASCAR had scoring systems (one from 1949 to 1951, and another from 1952 to 1967) that were based on prize money. This was simply explained by the fact that before the creation of a championship, there were only individual races. In the absence of a championship and points, prize money was the only and primary incentive for drivers. They were considered the measure of a race's value, not its difficulty, duration, and so on.
I will provide detailed explanations of the scoring systems from 1949-1951 and 1952-1967 in other posts. Here, we need to understand that despite their quirks, these systems were logical: races were divided into specific groups based on the prize money, and each group of races had a precisely differentiated amount of points awarded. A fan could create a points table for the races being run before the season began and then calmly follow the events.
However, reverting to that system would have been pointless. The reason is that it also had a relatively low value for victories in terms of points. In a complex and long race, the winner could receive 4,880 points, while the second-place finisher might earn, for example, 4,656 points. Not much of a difference there. The differentiation needed to be greater.
Furthermore, in 1974, the championship featured a reasonable number of 30 races, and it was expected that the leading group of drivers would participate in all of them. In the 1960s, the number of races sometimes exceeded 60, and only a handful of drivers participated in all of them.
That's why, for the first and only time in history, they decided not to simply award points based on the prize money allocated to the races but literally tied them to the money earned. If, for example, a driver earned $3,375 in a race, they would earn 3.375 points for the championship, in other words, it was prize money divided by 1000. That's how it worked. This was done because the winner typically earned much more money than the other finishers, so this scheme significantly increased the value of winning.
How points were awarded in each individual race
Now, let's understand how the prize money was allocated in those years and which part of it influenced the points. The only way to find this out was to buy the program for each race before it took place (or subscribe to special magazines where posted awards tables were duplicated).
For example, here is a photograph of a program page explaining the awards for the 1974 Southern 500 race (the 23rd stage of the championship). What we are interested in is highlighted in red.
The prize money for each race, as evident from this page, was composed of a vast number of factors. The first five finishers had a whole table of bonuses from sponsors, as illustrated here. For example, the 7th column represents bonuses from the Holley Carburator company, $250 for the winner and a bit less for the second and third place finishers. The 3rd column represents prizes from Bell Helmets, $300 for the winner and smaller amounts for the rest. The sum of all these sponsorships was calculated and can be seen in the right column ($25,000 for the winner, $10,000 for the 2nd place finisher, and so on).
Additionally, on the page, there are two other sections: "Television Money" and "Qualifying and Special Awards." I won't go into detail about the prizes and their criteria; you can read it for yourself since the page is in a readable resolution.
Here is a similar table from the program of the Rebel 500 race, the seventh stage of the championship.
Now, please take note of the areas highlighted in red. For the first five finishers, it's the first column of the table, and for the rest, it's simply a list below the table. In these areas, you can see the so-called racing purse, which represents the prize money that the driver received specifically for their finishing position, rather than other sources. The problem is that this data was almost never printed anywhere - everywhere, the total prize money earned by the drivers, including sponsor bonuses, qualification rewards, and so on, was specified. Determining how much of it pertained to the racing purse was usually very difficult.
But it was precisely the racing purse that determined how many points a driver received for a race. In the case of the Southern 500, the winner earned 18.15 points, the second-place driver earned 5.9 points, and so on, down to the fortieth-place finisher who received 1 point.
In the Rebel 500, the point distribution was different: the winner received 9.525 points, the second-place driver got 5.025 points, and so on, down to the fortieth-place driver who earned 0.55 points.
Indeed, this was problem number one. In no race did the amount of prize money match others. Drivers received an entirely unpredictable number of points, which could only be determined by looking at the race program or the results report.
For example, here is a report on the Music City 420, the 11th stage of the championship:
For clarity, I have highlighted the columns with racing purse and points in red. Notice that there was no consistent system for reducing racing purse based on finishing positions either! The difference in prize money between some positions was $15, between others, it was $5, and in some cases, there was no difference at all, or the difference exceeded $100. The decision on which prize money to award for each position was made solely by the race promoters and organizers. It could vary widely.
Furthermore, some drivers (in the case of the Music City 420, Jerry Sisco, who finished 22nd) did not receive points for the race because they were not entered in the race or were racing under a different license (not NASCAR).
So, we've established two key principles for points allocation in the 1974 races:
- In each race, a number of points are awarded equal to the prize money for the finishing position (racing purse), divided by 1000.
- The amount of points for the same finishing position varies in different races, even for the same place, and it can vary greatly. There is no consistent pattern because the prize money is determined by the race organizers' decisions.
How the final points total was determined
But NASCAR wouldn't be NASCAR if it were that simple. If you look at the 1974 championship table, you'll notice that the drivers accumulated an astronomically large number of points compared to what they earned in each race. Even if you were to award 20 points for each race, the maximum total would be 600 points. However, the table looks like this:
The thing is, the number of points accumulated after each race was multiplied by the number of races in which the driver participated. So, how did Richard Petty end up with, for example, 5037.75 points?
In the races, he earned 167.25 points, and then they were multiplied by 30 (he started in all the races of the season), resulting in 5037.75. Similarly, for drivers who started in 28 races, the number of points accumulated was multiplied by 28.
This was done to incentivize drivers to participate in as many races as possible, thus filling the racetracks and enhancing the spectacle of the races.
The problem with such a scheme was that it became extremely difficult for fans, team participants, drivers, and basically everyone to calculate intermediate championship results. In a normal championship, it's straightforward. After 25 races, a driver had 326 points. If they earned an additional 14 points in the 26th race, their total would be 326 + 14 = 340 points.
But here, simple addition wouldn't work. Here, you had to calculate using a formula.
For example, after race #10, Richard Petty had 587.6 points. This means he had 58.7 points, which were multiplied by his 10 starts.
In race #11, he finished first and earned an additional 4.3 points. To calculate the number of points after race #11, you had to use the following formula:
(4.3 + 587.6/10) * 11 = 693.66.
- Nr is the number of starts for the driver, including the current race
- Pr is the number of points earned in the current race
- Ps is the sum of points from previous races
So, to calculate the number of points a driver had at any given point in the championship, a fan had to know:
- The driver's finishing position in each race.
- The racing purse for each race (as a reminder, these were different for all races, and there was no consistent system).
- The number of starts for the driver.
There were, of course, additional challenges.
Firstly, in American racing, a system was widely used in which, if a certain driver missed a race and was replaced by another driver, the points earned by the substitute driver would go to the driver who missed the race. For example, if the championship leader fell ill and missed a race, another driver would start in their place, and the points and start would be credited to the leader. Today, such a system is very rare, although it is used in some series like Stadium Super Trucks.
The problem was that the official race results only listed the driver who actually started the race. Figuring out that their points went to another driver could only be determined empirically. Calculating such situations took me quite a bit of time.
Secondly, during those times, it was still possible to change cars. For instance, one driver would start a race, but halfway through, they would feel unwell. Another driver would then replace them and complete the race.
The problem was that the official race results only listed the driver who crossed the finish line. However, the points for the race were awarded to the driver who completed the most laps, and this could be either of them. I'm not sure if this system was still in place in 1974 (it was from the 1960s), but it's important to consider that such scenarios existed.
As a result, the race results often did not show the drivers who received the points. However, this could be calculated mathematically based on other results and team compositions, which is what I did.
How I Managed to Calculate the Final Championship Table for the 1974 Season
According to the information available on the Internet, this is simply impossible. In particular, there is no data on the racing purse for each race in the 1974 season, and without this information, conducting calculations is impossible, even if you know all the results (which I did, of course, although it should be noted that Racing Reference has many errors, literally dozens in every year, I'm just too lazy to write to them and have them corrected).
So, I took a risk and bought something for $15 called the Record Book 1975 - a statistical booklet covering the 1974 season. These kinds of booklets have been published regularly since 1952. Here's what it looks like:
Why did I say "took a risk"? Because these booklets were compiled by both reasonable people and complete imbeciles in various years, and there was no consistency. For example, in many of the final statistical record books, there isn't even a complete final table for the past championship, at most, the top 30 drivers are listed!
Most of the time, record books lack race results but are filled with utterly meaningless and uninformative statistics. For instance, in one record book (from the seventies), there were three columns presented quite seriously: the number of points earned by the driver in the season, the number of races the driver participated in during the season, and the multiplication of these two numbers! I scratched my head, but I couldn't understand why the brilliant compiler did this. If you divide the number of points by the number of races, you get meaningful data - the average number of points the driver scored in races. But if you multiply them, you get a number that means absolutely nothing. At all. It's like going to a store and multiplying the number of watermelons on the counter by the number of lamps on the ceiling.
But I got extremely lucky with Record Book 1975. It didn't have the final table for the 1974 championship (thank the heavens), but it did have the complete results of all the 1974 races with the specified racing purses. Phew, I was saved, and my $15 didn't go to waste.
The Final Point Table of the 1974 NASCAR Winston Cup Championship
So, here are the results of my efforts. Regarding this table, there are a few caveats:
- The multiplication considered not just the number of races a driver participated in but the number of races in which they started and had the right to earn points. For example, in the case of Jerry Sisco, he couldn't earn points in the Music City 420 race, so this race wasn't counted as his start.
- In five cases, the final sum I calculated didn't match what's listed on Racing Reference, but as we already know, there are many errors there. Plus, as I mentioned earlier, there's no complete table in the final report. So, I can't be entirely certain about the exact distribution of points for the following drivers: D.K. Ulrich (32nd place), Ramo Stott (39th place), Joe Mihalic (53rd place), George England (81st place), and Ross Surgenor (99th place).
In contrast to this crazy system, the system used at that time to determine the winner of the Manufacturers' Championship seems very simple. It was literally borrowed from Formula 1, with a 9-6-4-3-2-1 scheme for the first six places, respectively. If two or more cars from the same manufacturer finished in the top six, only the best of them earned points. So, for example, if the top six looks like Chevrolet - Ford - Dodge - Dodge - Mercury - Chevrolet, the points distribution would be: 9-6-4-0-2-0. The second cars of the same make did not earn points.
Here's the final manufacturers' table for 1974:
I also created a chart showing the championship leaders. In principle, I have created such charts for all NASCAR seasons (and it was very challenging). As you can see from the chart, Petty and Yarborough immediately pulled away from the rest and entered into a competition between themselves. The others were trailing in the background.
The rise of Earl Ross, who finished 8th and became the Rookie of the Year, looks impressive. This rise was due to his victory in a significant race, earning him 12.4 points, which were multiplied by the number of races he participated in, resulting in a significant total.
For manufacturers, a similar chart looks rather uneventful. Essentially, there was no change in positions throughout the entire season.
In general, I hope this article on the 1974 points system proves useful to someone.
If I gather my thoughts, I may write similar articles on other systems and seasons. I have all the calculations; I just never shared them with the wider audience.