In 1976, Cale Yarbrough finally got the best of Richard Petty, posting a second best 9 wins enroute to a 195 point victory for the Winston Cup Championship. He posted a series best 22 top 5 finishes, and tied everyone's favorite TV annnouncer Benny Parsons (God rest his soul) with 23 top 10's.
The Silver Fox only raced in 22 of the 30 races, winning 10 of them, and had to settle for a ninth place finish in the Latford points standings. Lets see how the FIA points standings shake out:

Code:
 
001 Cale Yarbrough.........428
002 David Pearson..........362
003 Richard Petty..........344
004 Benny Parsons..........289
005 Bobby Allison..........230
006 Buddy Baker............212
007 Lennie Pond............180
t08 Dave Marcis............175
t08 Darrell Waltrip........175
010 Dick Brooks............129
___________________________
011 Donnie Allison.........060
012 JD McDuffie............040
013 Richard Childress......033
014 James Hylton...........032
015 Coo Coo Marlin.........029
48 drivers scored at least 1 point this year. As you can see, David Pearson jumps up from P9 in real life to P2, and Cale won comfortably by a 66 point margin, or more than 2 races. His 14.3 points per race ranks pretty high on the champions list (just as a side note, Pearson's points per race of 16.5 would be the record for this "study" had I been considering the ppr for the drivers who didn't win the championship). This year had the second lowest total points scored by the P15 driver (29). The average number of starts for the top-15 drivers rose slightly from 1975 to 26.7 starts per driver, and the groups average start was 10.2. Their average finish was 13.6, or the same as last year. Again, all 30 wins were scored by the top 15 drivers, with the top 9 scoring 29 of the 30, with the 30th going to Donnie Allison in the fall race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The group averaged 18.2 races running at the finish, up almost 2 full races over the previous year, and averaged 8.5 DNF's. The group raised their lead lap finish average to 4.4 races out 30 (16.46%).

So it appears that although it was a little more competitive at the very top of the field, the rest of the field still had lots of work to do.

The "Bud Pole Award Winner" of this group would have been David Pearson with 8 Poles.

to Cale Yarbrough, both the 1976 Winston Cup, and FIA Cup Champion