As we look ahead to the 2024 NHRA Lucas Oil Series, let’s take a moment to reflect on our 2023 Lucas Oil Series champions. Last season saw Bruno Massel, Jr. cement GOAT status in Competition Eliminator, as his fourth national championship in the category marked the first time that any racer (including the likes of Rampy, Marapulos, and Aragona) has earned more than 3 national titles in Comp. Bruno was joined on stage in November by Wyatt Wagner; the phenom who forever etched his name in the history books after accumulating a massive 743 point score to win his first Super Stock crown. That 743 point mark tied Wagner with Peter Biondo for the third highest sportsman points total in the modern era (since NHRA changed the points system in the mid-1990’s). In case you’re wondering who holds the top two spots, it’s the same guy that Wyatt just tied for third – Peter Biondo (Biondo posted 765 points en route to the 1996 Super Stock title, and an otherworldly 792 points in his near-perfect 2005 Stock Eliminator campaign). Kyle Rizzoli earned his overdue first national title in Stock Eliminator. John Labbous added the ‘23 Super Comp Crown to his 2017 Super Gas title. Vince Musolino set the record for most points ever accumulated in the Top Dragster category’s 9-year history as a national championship class with 631 (as a side note, 2nd place finisher Clint Giese tallied 618 points, which is the third highest highest T/D score ever: unfortunately for him, it came in the same season that Musolino logged the highest score to date)! Brandon Miller posted an astronomical 655 point score, tying Jeffrey Barker’s mark from 2015, the classes first year as a national championship category, for the 2nd highest points total in class history (the top mark also belongs to Barker, who trumped his ‘15 performance two years later with a score of 675). I dedicated last month’s column to detailing the improbable late season charge of Trevor Larson, who upended what appeared to almost certainly be Sherman Adcock’s unprecedented third Super Gas crown by a mere 2 points at season’s end.
The performance of these seven drivers made me ask: did 2023 provide the strongest group of championship seasons in sportsman racing history? This prompted a little research (yes, I spent WAY too much time writing this column)! Statistically speaking, 2023 was, at the top, the strongest sportsman season in recent memory. Yes, I’ve got statistics to back that statement up – if you ever listened to Jared Pennington and I on the Sportsman Drag Racing Podcast, prepare for the full on points-nerd out (I’m good for this at least twice a year)!
The seven 2023 Lucas Oil Series champions combined to average just under 669 points each. For reference, sportsman racers earn points at their best 8 events of the season. To get to 669 points, a racer would have to average 84 points per event: that’s a runner-up finish in a six-round race… EIGHT times in one season! While that average is buoyed by Wagner’s massive total, it also includes Massel’s 594 point championship campaign, which in a parity-laiden season for the Competition Eliminator category marked the lowest points total of Bruno’s 4 championships by 50 points (nearly 5 full rounds of competition).
Since 2015, the average championship points total is 642 points: so last year’s champions eclipsed that mark by a whopping 27 points (nearly 3 full round wins). In fact, over that span, that 669 point average is the highest average among sportsman world champions. The only season that comes close is 2017. Hop into the proverbial time machine, and you may remember that as the season that David Rampy posted a near-perfect Competition Eliminator season to lead all champions with 710 points. That’s also the year that Jeffrey Barker posted the highest Top Sportsman score ever at 675. John Labbous, Jr., coincidentally enough, earned his first national title that season in Super Gas, and Justin Lamb secured the extremely rare championship double, taking home both the Stock and Super Stock crown.
In the Super Stock, Stock, Super Comp, and Super Gas ranks specifically, the four 2023 champions combined to AVERAGE 700 points. That 700 point total is sacred ground in sportsman drag racing: that mark has been eclipsed just 23 times since the points system was introduced 3 decades ago (Wagner was just the third driver to eclipse that mark in the last 6 seasons). To date, no sportsman driver – in any class – has ever scored 700 points in a single season and failed to win the championship. That 700 point average has not even been approached by racers in these classes over the last decade (676 was the closest, back in 2017).
And it wasn’t just the champions who stood out in 2023. The drivers who will wear a number 2 this season: Brad Burton, Jeff Strickland, Devin Isenhower, Mike Morehead, Jim Greenheck, Giese and Adcock, Jr combined to average 628 points in 2023. For reference, that’s 78 points per event (akin to winning about 4 ½ rounds each outing for the entire season). That beats the average second place finish of the last decade by 25 points (more than 2 rounds), and was topped only twice. In 2017, Kevin Helms (who actually finished 2nd to Lamb in BOTH Stock and Super Stock), Labbous (SC), Sandy Wilkins (TS), and the late, great Frank Aragona all posted scores that are traditionally worthy of a title, only to finish second. In 2015, every second place finisher outside of the fast brackets (which are limited in points earning opportunities due to smaller qualified fields) scored at least 614 points, putting that season’s average just ahead of the ‘23 group.
Sportsman racers have long coveted the single digit valence number, signifying a top ten national finish in their class. In 2023, the average points total required to finish in the top ten was just over 517 points – that’s 64 points per event, which means that on average top 10 drivers staged for round four in each of their eight claimed events. 517 is more than a full round higher than the 10-year average of 503, and is the second highest average total for tenth place finishers in that time frame, behind only 2015 (where 10th place finishers with familiar names like Wudarczyk, Richardson,Laris, Lamb and others combined to average 523 points).
Subjectively speaking, this data made sense to me. 2015, nearly a decade ago, feels like the time that parity really began to reign. In my youth, you could seemingly walk through the staging lanes for round one of any sportsman category, and pick out 10 drivers to win the event. It felt like the racer that hoisted the Wally at day’s end, more often than not, was one of the ten. The shift toward parity occurred prior to ‘15 to be sure, but I think as racers we tend to agree that it’s harder to distinguish stand out performers among these talent rich and quality equipment laiden fields each and every year. And the numbers backed that up in terms of lower scores atop the standings… Until 2023.
So what does any of this mean? Are we to believe that 2023 was an aberration? Perhaps it is an outlier. Maybe we’ll see a barrage of 620 point champions in ‘24. Maybe 500 points will make the top 10 in Super Stock, and 450 will earn a single digit in Top Sportsman. Or, perhaps this season is a harbinger of things to come: that despite the seemingly level playing field across the board, the elite will continue to find a way to separate themselves. Time will tell. The one thing we know for sure is that 2023 results do not back up the seemingly field-wide claims of increased parity.
What does it mean? I’ll leave it to you to speculate, and maybe I’ll dive back down this rabbit hole at the end of 2024 to see if this trend continued!
