Double-digit wins doesn't guarantee a championship

Since 1998, winning 10 races in a single season has been achieved just once, by Jimmie Johnson in 2007, the second of his three consecutive championships. Carl Edwards came close last season, finishing with nine victories after winning three of the final four races on the schedule.

But scoring double-digit victories hasn't always guaranteed a title. Starting with Herb Thomas in 1954, a total of 16 drivers have won at least 10 races in a year but failed to take home the championship trophy.

Mark Aumann

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The most recent occurrence came in 1996, when Jeff Gordon reeled off 10 wins, including three in a row in September, but lost the championship by 37 points to Hendrick teammate Terry Labonte. Both drivers had 21 top-five and 24 top-10 finishes, but the key to Labonte's season came at Charlotte Motor Speedway in October.

Gordon had what seemed at the time to be an insurmountable 111-point lead, and qualified alongside Bobby Labonte on the front row, with Terry Labonte rolling off 16th. Gordon led twice early in the race, but engine issues put the No. 24 Chevrolet several laps behind. At the same time, Labonte charged through the field, taking the lead for the first time on Lap 61 -- and for good when he passed Jeff Burton with 26 laps remaining.

The win, coupled with Gordon's 31st-place finish, allowed Labonte to close to within one point of the lead with three races remaining. Even though Gordon finished third in the season-finale at Atlanta, Labonte's fifth-place run clinched his second championship.

Rusty Wallace won a third of the races run in 1993 -- four more than eventual champion Dale Earnhardt -- but a four-race stretch starting at Sears Point basically doomed his title chances. After winning three consecutive races, including dominating the 500-lapper at Martinsville in April, Wallace had a 101-point advantage on Earnhardt.

But things unraveled on the twisty California road course in the Sonoma hills, when the transmission let go in Wallace's No. 2 Pontiac, saddling him with a 38th-place finish. Things went from bad to worse with crashes at Charlotte and Dover -- with Earnhardt winning both races -- followed by an engine failure at Pocono. At that point, Wallace was fifth in standings, 298 points behind the Intimidator.

But Wallace put together a massive rally, winning at Richmond, Dover, North Wilkesboro and Rockingham, which pulled him within 72 points of Earnhardt with two races remaining. But his championship hopes were basically extinguished when he dropped two laps to the leaders and finished 19th. Even a win in the final race of the season couldn't overcome Earnhardt's advantage, and Wallace came up 80 points short at the end.

Jeff Gordon had 10 wins in '96 but lost the title to teammate Terry Labonte.

Wallace's disappointment continued in 1994, when he won twice as many races -- eight -- as Earnhardt, only to finish third in the standings.

Bill Elliott had, by any standard of measurement, a dominant season in 1985, winning 11 of 28 races. At one stretch, he led at least 10 laps in 12 consecutive races, winning seven of those. And he was running at the finish two more times than eventual champ Darrell Waltrip. But it was the timing of Elliott's poor runs, coupled with a huge comeback by Waltrip at the end of the season, that made the difference.

When Elliott won the Southern 500 on Labor Day -- and the Winston Million -- he built his lead over Waltrip to 206 points. But while Waltrip would win at Richmond and finish second at Dover and Martinsville, Elliott ran into trouble.

He wound up off the pace at Richmond, finishing 12th. He won the pole and led 173 laps at Dover but on Lap 227, his No. 9 Ford suddenly slowed, with smoke spewing from under the car. It turned out to be a transmission failure -- and it took 31 minutes for the team to switch out the gearbox -- leaving him 70 laps behind eventual winner Harry Gant.

That cut Waltrip's deficit to 86 points with six races to go.

"This thing [the points race] is really interesting for me right now," Elliott said. "I knew I was the best car out there at the first of the race, but we'll never know now if we had the best car out there."

Elliott's downhill slide continued at Martinsville when he got caught up in an accident and finished 17th, losing another 63 points of his lead. And the meltdown was completed a week later at North Wilkesboro, when more mechanical problems left Elliott with a 30th-place finish. Even though Elliott rallied to score three consecutive top-five finishes from that point, he could never overcome that string of bad luck and misfortune.

Not surprisingly, Richard Petty is the king of winning 10 or more races in a non-championship season. He did it on four occasions -- 1963, 1968, 1969 and 1970. Bobby Allison and David Pearson did it twice, although Pearson's might have been more the result of running a part-time schedule. Cale Yarborough is the only other driver to accomplish the feat in NASCAR's modern era. He had a 10-win season in 1974, the same year that Petty won 10 races.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.