1984 FIA Cup Championship

[slorydn1]

In 1984, Terry Labonte won the first of his two Winston Cup Championships by beating Harry Gant by just 65 points. Labonte "only" had two wins on his way to winning the championship, but he had a series high 17 top 5's and tied Bill Elliot with 24 top 10's. DW, who finished p5 in the standings, again led the most laps (2030) and won a series high 7 races. The real Winston Cup standings and stats can be found here:

http://www.racing-reference.info/yeardet/1984/W

Lets see how the FIA Cup shakes out:


001 Terry Labonte..........316
002 Darrell Waltrip........310
003 Harry Gant.............295
004 Bill Elliot............246
005 Dale Earnhardt.........227
006 Bobby Allison..........198
007 Cale Yarborough........170
008 Geoff Bodine...........155
009 Ricky Rudd.............152
010 Richard Petty..........120
t11 Tim Richmond...........118
t11 Neil Bonnett...........118
013 Benny Parsons..........107
014 Buddy Baker............090
015 Ron Bouchard...........088


32 Drivers scored at least one point this season, and a then record 13 drivers scored at least 100 points-a record that would be tied a few times in subsequent years, but not broken until 2002!! TLab got it done here too, by a scant 6 points over DW. TLab only averaged 10.5 ppr this year, yet p15 Bouchard scored 88 points which was the highest to date for the p15 driver. The groups average of 6.6 ppr is the highest it has been since 1980. Cale Yarborough and Benny Parsons (16 and 14 starts, respectively) cause the groups average starts to drop to 27.4 of 30 races. The groups avg start was 9.6 and avg finish was 12.2, which is the record for the entire study. 28 of the 30 race wins were among the top 10, the last two won by Tim Richmond (spring North Wilkesboro) and Benny Parsons (spring Atlanta), respectively.
Reliabilty numbers took a jump upwards, with the RAF rising all the way to 22.2 of 30 (81.02%) and DNF's dropped to 5.2 which is 3.1 better than 1983!
The group averaged finishing on the lead lap 8.5 times (30.17%), the same as 1983.

The Bud Pole Award winner would have been split 4 ways, with Bill Elliot, Cale Yarborough, Darrell Waltrip, and Ricky Rudd all scoring 4 poles a piece!

Congrats to Terry Labonte, the 1984 Winston Cup and FIA Cup Champion :beer: :beer:

[Alexamateo]

Interesting because I thought that this is one that would change with Darrell Waltrip winning 7 races to Labonte's 2. Of course he did rise from second to fifth.

Looking at it another way, this point system really rewards the podium (top 3) finish. On that measure, Labonte had 14 podiums (2 win, 6 seconds, 6 thirds) to Waltrip's 12 (7 wins, 2 seconds, 3 thirds) Harry Gant had 3 wins, 6 seconds, and 0 thirds).

So in other words, I like it because it rewards winning without punishing so badly the bad finish, but you still have to run fairly consistently. It seems like Waltrip that year would win some weeks and be out to lunch the next.

[Alexamateo]

Of course in my previous post, I meant to say he rose from 5th to second. :D

[slorydn1]

Of course in my previous post, I meant to say he rose from 5th to second. :D

I knew what you meant....in fact, if you hadn't pointed it out, I wouldn't even have noticed :p