1982 FIA Cup Championship

[slorydn1]

In 1982, DW won his second Winston Cup by beating Bobby Allison by 72 points. DW scored a league high 12 wins that year, tied Terry Labonte with 17 top 5's, and had 20 top 10's (TLab had 21). DW led the most laps that year also (3027) which was 32.01% of the laps he completed.

Lets see how the FIA cup championship shakes out:

001 Darrell Waltrip........393
002 Bobby Allison..........320
003 Terry Labonte..........264
004 Richard Petty..........178
005 Harry Gant.............175
006 Cale Yarborough........150
007 Tim Richmond...........140
008 Benny Parsons..........138
009 Dale Earnhardt.........133
010 Bill Elliot............129
_________________________
011 Ricky Rudd.............118
012 Neil Bonnett...........106
013 Morgan Shepard.........098
014 Dave Marcis............089
015 Ron Bouchard...........085

40 drivers scored at least 1 point this year. DW beat Bobby Allison, strangely enough, by almost the same amount of FIA points (73) as Winston Cup points (72). DW scored 13.1 points per race this year. The top 15 group as a whole averaged 6.1 points per race which is the lowest yet, but not the all time low.
The group averaged running 27.3 of the 30 races that year. The groups avg start was 9.3, and avg finish was 14.0. All 30 race wins came in the top 15, with 28 of those in the top 10 (Dave Marcis won at Richmond early in the year, and Neil Bonnett won the Coke 600 in May). Reliability numbers were down again, with the group avg RAF down to 17.1 out of 30 races or a record low of the study of 62.44%. The groups avg DNF of 10.3 was the worst of the study. The groups 6.3 Lead Lap finishes of 30 races was the lowest it had been since the 5.8 in 1979, as was the LLF% of 22.93%

The Bud Pole Award winner is Darrell Waltrip with 7 poles.

Congrats to Darrell Waltrip, the 1982 Winston Cup, and FIA Cup Champion

[Alexamateo]

Slo, this was longtime independent Buddy Arrington's best points season as he finished 7th in the standings after being as high as 4th earlier in the season. He also had his career high in top 10's with 8. I see he didn't make the top 15 in this system. Where was he in the final rundown?

[slorydn1]

Buddy Arrington scored 29 points in this system. Not sure exactly where that would place him as I only did the standings back as far as 15th place. I can tell you that at 29 points that would have put him somewhere in the top 25....just eye balling the scoring "grid" i put together, I'm counting around p22, p23 in that area. All though he did well in the Latford system, he didn't have any top 5's, therefore no double digit points days (his best day was p6, or 8 points, at Michigan in the late summer race). For comparison purposes, Mark Martin and Kyle Petty had 39 points that year, and David Pearson scored 25.