Petty Milestones: Richard's drive for five

At the start of the 1974 season, Richard Petty was once again poised to enter uncharted racing territory. After establishing himself as a two-time champion during the '60s, then winning back-to-back titles in 1971 and 1972, Petty entered the campaign with a chance to become stock car racing's first five-time champion.

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A shift in the points system made the 1974 season on of the most unique and remarkable in NASCAR history. A national gas shortage sent the cost of racing soaring in the early '70s, and NASCAR tweaked the points system several times to try to encourage teams to run a full schedule.

Purse winnings were multiplied by the number of starts a team made during the season, with that number divided by 1,000 to get the final results and standings.

The system was designed to reward winning and running a full schedule, and it worked in spades, setting up a season-long showdown between five of NASCAR's greatest champions: Richard Petty, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, Bobby Allison and Benny Parsons, who had won the title the year before. Eric Ross was the only other driver to win a race that year.

Petty eventually turned the race into a runaway with ten wins, including a victory at the Daytona 500. But the battle was ferocious in the early going.

Petty won at Daytona and Rockingham, but it was Cale Yarborough who dominated the first part of the schedule, winning four of the first nine races. David Pearson won twice as well, and Bobby Allison established himself as a dark horse by winning at Richmond during that stretch.

Yarborough continued to dominate through the next portion of the schedule, winning three of the next seven races as Petty won twice and Pearson took the spring Talladega race to remain within shouting distance.

Normally it was the trademark Petty consistency that helped earn his championships over the long haul. But in 1974, he would add a victory blitz to the formula, winning consecutive races at Atlanta, Pocono and Talladega, then winning back-to-back at Richmond and Dover two races after Yarborough ended his streak.

As a result, Petty entered the stretch run with a lead of over 500 points, and while he failed to win another race, he finished second twice and third once to keep Yarborough and Pearson at bay. When the season ended, he had ten victories to his credit and a final victory margin of well over 500 points, leaving four of NASCAR's greatest champions to round out the top five as also-rans.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Petty's championship was his ability to turn the race into a runaway against Yarborough, who also won ten races. But the season was just as noteworthy for some of the anomalies produced by the unusual wrinkle in the points formula.

Petty, who earned just under $300,000 that year, managed to increase his points lead despite crashing in the Southern 500, blowing up at Martinsville and finishing behind Yarborough at Rockingham. Pearson ran just 19 races but won seven of them, meaning that Petty, Yarborough and Pearson combined to win 27 of the 30 races that season.

NASCAR would change the points system again the following year, adopting the intricate formula devised by statistician Bob Latford that remained largely intact until this year.

But the scoring change would hardly matter to Petty, who would go on to win another title in 1975 and complete his quest to become the sport's dominant driver. NASCAR had other great champions who had won multiple titles, but as stock car racing began the transition into the period that would become known as the Modern Era, it was Petty who had earned the moniker of "The King."