NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Ask any NHRA Sportsman racer how many points they’d like to score in any given year, and they’ll almost certainly fire back with “just enough to win a championship” or some kind of similar assessment. That certainly rings true because winning a coveted NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series title simply requires scoring just one more point than your opponents. 

Then again, there is something to be said about having a dominant season and posting a gaudy points total. In NHRA Sportsman racing, that would include anything more than 700 points. That’s the gold standard, and few drivers ever get there. In fact, over the last 21 seasons, there have been just 24 points totals. 

The current points structure allows for a maximum of approximately 850 points for racers in Super Stock, Stock, Super Comp, and Super Gas, with a bit less in Comp, Top Dragster, and Top Sportsman due to smaller fields. To put that into perspective, a racer who averaged a semifinal finish (83 points) for an entire season of eight races would finish with 664 points, well below the 700-point threshold. That also means that any racer who gets to 700 points has to make a lot of final rounds and turn on a lot of win lights. 

When it comes to impressive points totals, no one compares to Peter Biondo. “The Terminator” has done it four times and possesses the three highest totals in the history of the sport. Biondo’s total of 792 points en route to the 2005 Stock title represents an incredible achievement that may never be duplicated. Biondo’s record season included seven wins in scored events.

Just so no one thought that performance was a fluke, Biondo also has scores of 765 and 743 during his Super Stock championship seasons in 1996 and 2003. Finally, Biondo also racked up 712 points when he won the Super Stock title in 2000.

Beyond Biondo’s stunning totals, Wyatt Wagner put up a remarkable score of 743 points in 2023 when he won in Super Stock, while two-time Stock world champion Al Corda also put up a robust total of 738 in 1997. And then there is Luke Bogacki, who was dominant in both of his championship seasons with totals of 734 and 731 in 2021 and 2014, respectively.

When it comes to impressive scores, it’s also worth taking a closer look at Comp eliminator, where 700-point scores are incredibly difficult to achieve because most events only award 95 points for a victory, and some of the shorter fields are limited to 85. That has not stopped Doug Doll, Bruno Massel, Frank Aragona Jr., Al Ackerman, David Rampy, and Dan Fletcher from hitting the magic number. Doll’s 730-point total from the 2016 season is particularly noteworthy because he had a perfect season with all eight-score events as victories.

Ironically, no driver had ever scored 700 points and not won a championship until 2023, when Jimmy Hidalgo Jr. became the charter member of a club that no one wants to be a part of. Hidalgo had a monster season with 711 points in Stock eliminator but finished a single point behind Joe Sorensen. Prior to that, Jody Lang scored 699 points in his second-place finish to Joe Santangelo, who scored 701 in 2011.

Turning back the clock a bit further, there were numerous memorable seasons before the current scoring system was adopted in 1995. Prior to that, points were awarded at 100 points per round, which means a score above 7,000 would be approximately the same as 700 today. Included in that group are Dan DiVita, Scotty Richardson, Steve Cohen, Jeff Taylor, and Jeg Coughlin Jr. Cohen scored 7,437 points on his way to the inaugural Super Comp title in 1987, while the late Scotty Richardson had totals of 7,318 and 7,133 in 1994 and 1991, respectively. Before he won five Pro Stock titles, Coughlin racked up 7,124 markers when he won the Super Gas crown in 1992. Finally, Taylor has now won five championships, including last year’s Comp title, but he has never been more dominant than in 1988, when he scored 7,036 in Super Stock.

So, will anyone make it to the 700 mark in 2026?

That’s incredibly tough to predict given the competitive nature of the NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series classes. Last year, Super Stock champ Justin Lamb nearly cleared the bar with 691 points, while Stock champ Russ “Bubba” Linke scored 677. Both came close, but neither made it to 700. Lamb is an interesting case study because he has already won five championships, and most of them have been dominant as he has previously had numerous seasons where he has scored 650 or more points. 

This much is certain. Anyone who does exceed 700 points, or even comes close, will undoubtedly have their fair share of good fortune with the bulk of the really close races falling in their favor.