In 1977, Cale Yarborough cruised to his second consecutive Winston Cup by a whopping 386 points over Richard Petty. For the younger fans of Nascar who don't know, Cale Yarborough was the Jimmie Johnson of his day (well, not exactly-more like a mix of Jimmy Johnson's rip your throat out consistency and Tony Stewart's rip your throat out attitude-a deadly combination for the competition). His statline was rather impressive, with 9 wins, 25 top 5's and 27 top 10's (yes thats 27 out of 30 or an astounding 90% !!!!!)

Lets see how the FIA Cup standings shook out:

Code:
001 Cale Yarborough........475
002 Richard Petty..........377
003 Benny Parsons..........348
004 Darrell Waltrip........342
005 David Pearson..........260
006 Buddy Baker............172
007 Donnie Allison.........157
008 Dick Brooks............152
009 Bobby Allison..........109
010 Neil Bonnett...........107
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011 Dave Marcis............074
012 Lennie Pond............052
013 Ricky Rudd.............047
014 Richard Childress......045
015 Skip Manning...........041
41 drivers scored at least one point this year. Neil Bonnett, who only started 23 of the 30 races and was p18 in the Latford points standings jumps up to p10 and gets to go to the banquet, where-as James Hylton who ran all 30 races and was p7 in real life doesn't even make the top 15 list here.
Cale won real comfortably, by 98 points, or almost a 4 race margin (in fact he clinched in race 27 at Charlotte by finishing in second while Richard Petty failed to score). Cale avg'd 15.8 ppr, and the avg of the top 15 as a whole went up to 7.1, making 1977 tied for 1st in that category with 1980. The avg starts for the top 15 dropped to 25.7 out of the 30 races, the lowest in the 35 years of this study. The groups average start was 9.2, and average finish was 13.3, or slightly better than the previous 2 years. The reliabilty of the top 15 improved yet again with the Running at Finish dropping slightly from 1976 to 17.9 (but when coupled with the low avg number of starts the percentage improved to 69.43 %, or the highest to that date. The avg DNF's dropped to 7.9, and lead lap finish avg improved to 5.9 out of 30, or 22.8 %. All 30 of the race wins were scored by the top 10 drivers yet again.

The "Bud Pole Award Winner" of this group was Neil Bonnett, with 6 poles.

to Cale Yarborough, the 1977 Winston Cup and FIA Cup Champion!