Adam Cianciarulo won the Monster Energy Cup Supercross event from Las Vegas on his 450cc debut. Álex Márquez made the save of the weekend. Garrett Smithley was in the news again. Fabian Coulthard and Tony D'Alberto lost their sixth place finish from the Bathurst 1000 and DJR Team Penske was fined $250,000 and stripped of 300 teams' championship points for a team orders breach. The Road to Indy tested at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. NASCAR ended another playoff round and it was not straightforward. Here is a run down of what got me thinking.
We Need to Take a Look at the 1973 NASCAR Cup Season
I don't know how I stumbled upon this, maybe it was when the 2020 NASCAR schedule was released and it had Phoenix closing out the 2020 season on November 8th and curiosity as to when a NASCAR season last ended that early led me to 1973 when the season closed on this day, October 21, 1973.
David Pearson won the finale and it was his 11th victory of the season, it was his 14th top five and top ten finish of the season and Pearson ended 13th in the championship.
The main reason why Pearson was so low in the championship was because he and the Wood Brothers only ran 18 of 28 races, however, the entire championship picture is startling.
Benny Parsons won the championship with only one race victory, not unheard of considering Parsons had 15 top five finishes, only Cale Yarborough and Buddy Baker had more, and Parsons' 21 top ten finishes led NASCAR. However, what is interesting is Parsons had one lead lap finish, his victory at Bristol in July.
If Parsons' number of lead lap finishes surprise you, five of the top ten in the championship had zero lead lap finishes and Bobby Allison, who finished seventh in the championship, had only three lead lap finishes, two of which were victories.
Pearson led NASCAR with 14 lead lap finishes. Only eight drivers had lead lap finishes in 1973! Richard Petty had ten lead lap finishes, Yarborough had eight, Baker had six, Allison had three while Parsons had one as well as Dick Brooks and Mark Donohue. Donohue won the season opener at Riverside and his only other start was Atlanta on April 1st. Brooks won the August Talladega race.
Racing was different in the 1970s. Attrition meant retirements. It meant broken water pumps, spring failures, carburetors breaking and burnt pistons. If you finished 10 laps down you could get a top ten finish and on the really eventful days that could get a top five finish.
Pearson had 11 victories and still could only be 13th in the championship. Petty was fourth in the championship despite six victories, second to only Pearson, and Petty had 15 top five finishes and 17 top ten finishes. James Hylton was fourth in the championship; a spot ahead of Petty, with one top five finish and 11 top ten finishes. Walter Ballard and Elmo Langley were eighth and ninth in the championship, neither driver had a top five finish and both drivers had four top ten finishes.
Attrition aside, what led for such a crazy championship outcome?
The answer is the points system and it was unconventional.
Each race paid the same number of points per position. A victory paid 125 points with second place receiving 98 points and the number of points per position decreasing by two all the way down to 50th.
However, each race carried weighted points for laps completed and it varied based on track size. Each lap completed at a track under a mile paid 0.25 points. A one-mile track paid 0.5 points per lap. A 1.3-mile track (Darlington) paid 0.70 points a lap with the 1.5-mile ovals paying 0.75 points per lap. The two-mile ovals paid one point per laps and the tracks 2.5 miles in length or greater paid 1.25 points per lap.
A win at Martinsville would pay 250 points but a victory at Talladega would pay 360 points. What every other position paid depended on laps completed. If you had a bad day, not only would you have to settle for points of a 27th place finish but if you finished 100 laps down at a place like Michigan you would lose an additional 100 points to the race winner and any other car that finished on the lead lap.
How could someone like Hylton, whose best finish was fourth at Talladega two laps down, finish ahead of Petty with six victories? Hylton completed the most laps in the 1973 laps, 9,324 laps or 90.9% of the laps run. Petty completed 8,644 laps, only 84.3% of the laps.
The top nine championship finishers were the top nine in laps completed with the drivers that completed the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth most laps finishing fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth respectively in the championship (Petty, Baker, Allison, Ballard, Langley).
It was the system for the time period and after the 1973 season the points awarded for laps completed were dropped. The 1974 championship was decided based on earnings multiplied by race starts and divided by 1,000.
NASCAR's patented points system was not introduced until the 1975 season and it would remain, with a few tweaks with more points given to the race winner, through the 2010 season before the one-point between position system was introduced in 2011.
The 1973 season shows the importance of a points system and not only a points system but a balanced points system. The World 600 paid the most points, which kind of makes sense because it was the longest race, with 425 points but it was 175 points greater than victories at Bristol, Martinsville and Richmond.
However, Pearson's season does bring into question how a points system should work and what it means to be champion.
Is the champion the best driver?
It is very hard to sit down and argue that a driver that won over a third of the races and finished in the top five in half of them while no one else came close to those percentages is not champion. The only thing against Pearson is he did not run over a third of the races.
Participation had been key in pretty much every North American championship. NASCAR has historically always paid points to every driver that starts a race. IndyCar had a system that would pay to the top ten or top 12 finishers but in the last 25 years it has followed suit and every starter gets points.
Should that be the case?
I understand why a series would want drivers to run in as many races as possible. It would not be good for a series if you had many teams cherry picking and only doing half the races or two-thirds of the races. A series has to incentivize entries to go to all the races that way some tracks do not get short-changed with a thin grid.
But should showing up to every race factor into whether or not a driver is considered the best? Shouldn't the best be champion? And if the best isn't champion, what does that say about the championship?
I went back and applied the 9-6-4-3-2-1 points system that Formula One utilized from 1961-1990 to the 1973 season and Pearson would have won the championship with 115 points to Petty's 100 points with Yarborough in third on 96 points, Baker fourth on 79 points, Allison fifth on 70 points and Pearsons in sixth on 61 points.
The title would have still gone down to the final race, as Pearson would have entered on 106 points, six ahead of Petty. Petty could have won the title with a race victory and Pearson finishes fifth or worse.
To expand on this further, I applied the current Formula One system, 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1 but minus the bonus point for fastest lap and Pearson would have won the title again with 326 points, ten ahead of Petty but Pearson would have won the title on the final day of the season as he would have entered the finale trailing Petty by 15 points. Petty would have needed a top four finish to take the title.
Yarborough would have been third on 314 points with Baker in fourth on 283 points, Allison in fifth on 245 points and Parsons two points behind Allison.
I also went back and applied the points system NASCAR introduced in the 1975 season to 1973 to see how it would have played out if everyone got points but the points were equal for each race.
Pearson would not have been champion. In fact, Pearson would have been 11th in the championship. The title would have gone to the final race with Yarborough leading on 3,905 points, 12 points ahead of Petty and 50 points ahead of Parsons. Yarborough would have won the title with 4,075 points, 124 points ahead of Petty and 141 points ahead of Pearson. Baker would have been fourth and Cecil Gordon, who finished third in the actual 1973 season with no victories, eight top five finishes and 18 top ten finishes, would have rounded out the top five.
It is interesting to see how each system would have played out. Each would have gone to the wire but in the two Formula One systems, the championship would have come down between the two drivers with the most victories. In the system that paid out to the top ten, Petty entered ahead of Pearson, despite Pearson having the most victories.
The system NASCAR introduced in the 1975 season balanced winning races along with consistent finishes. Three drivers with similar but slightly different seasons would have bene alive for the championship.
It is a matter of principle and what one believes should factor into a championship.
Looking at Pearson's season, it is remarkable. Along with his 11 victories, he had eight pole positions and an average starting position of 3.4, the best in each category. His average finish was 7.8; the only drivers that had better average finishes ran three races or fewer. He led 2,658 of 5,338 laps completed, that is 49.79%. The only driver that led more was Yarborough with 3,167 laps led but that was out of 9,314 laps completed, 34.002% of the laps Yarborough ran.
Pearson's 1973 season is a benchmark for greatness, championship or not, but it does require us to consider what decides a champion and what can be done to ensure each season ends with the right person hosting the trophy.
Champions From the Weekend
Toni Vilander won the Blancpain GT World Challenge America championship after a second place finish and third place finish in Las Vegas.
Ian James won the GT4 America sprint championship with finishes of first and fourth at Las Vegas. Michael Cooper won the second race.
The #19 Stephan Cameron Racing BMW of Greg Liefooghe and Sean Quinlan won GT4 America SprintX Pro-Am championship.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Adam Cianciarulo but did you know...
Marc Márquez won MotoGP's Japanese Grand Prix, his fourth consecutive victory and his tenth victory of 2019. Luca Marini won the Moto2 race, his second consecutive victory. Lorenzo Dalla Porta won the Moto3 race, his second victory of 2019.
Denny Hamlin won the NASCAR Cup race from Kansas, his fifth victory of the season. Brandon Jones won the Grand National Series race, his first career victory.
The #9 K-PAX Racing Bentley of Álvaro Parente and Andy Soucek swept the Blancpain GT World Challenge America races from Las Vegas. The #36 McLaren of Jarett Andretti and Colin Mullan swept the GT4 America SprintX races.
Coming Up This Weekend
Formula One moves to Mexico.
MotoGP ventures to Australia.
NASCAR trudges into Martinsville.
Super Formula closes its season at Suzuka and World Touring Car Cup will also be on the bill.
European Le Mans Series punctuates its season at Portimão in Portugal.
World Superbike calls it quits on 2019 in Qatar.
Supercars has an endurance event at Surfers Paradise.
World Rally Championship slides into Spain.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
