The 2000 Winston Cup season

Bobby Labonte drove a Pontiac for Joe Gibbs Racing, and his year was built on staying near the front rather than on a long run of wins. He won four points races: the Dura Lube/Kmart 400 at Rockingham in February, the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis in August, the Pepsi Southern 500 at Darlington in September and the UAW-GM Quality 500 at Charlotte in October. He also started from the pole twice, at Michigan in June and at Watkins Glen in August, both weekends that this archive holds. What separated him from the field was the absence of bad days. The title was clinched at Homestead, the next-to-last race, where a fourth-place finish put the trophy out of reach with a round to spare; it was the second straight year the championship had been settled there, and going into the Atlanta finale Labonte led Jeff Burton by 256 points. When the final tally was posted, Dale Earnhardt had climbed to second on 4865 points against Labonte's 5130, a margin of 265, with Burton third on 4841. The championship was the first for Joe Gibbs as a Cup owner since he formed the team in 1992. Earnhardt's runner-up finish carries a weight nobody felt at the time: the season article notes that this would unexpectedly be his final full-time year, since he was killed in the Daytona 500 the following February. It was also the last season for three-time champion Darrell Waltrip. Among manufacturers, Ford took the title with 14 wins and 234 points, ahead of Pontiac with 11 wins and 213 and Chevrolet with nine wins and 199.

The top ten in points, with each driver's win total from the season's results table. Note how far down the list the year's most prolific winner sits.

Ricky Rudd finished fifth without winning a race, five points ahead of Tony Stewart, who won six. That is the Winston Cup points system of the era in one line: every race paid the same, consistency paid more than victories, and a driver who ran in the top ten every week could outscore one who alternated wins with wrecks. The system dated from 1975 and stayed in place until the Chase format arrived in 2004.

Six wins put Tony Stewart sixth. Four wins and no collapses put Bobby Labonte first.

Fourteen drivers shared the 34 points races. Where a track hosted two dates, the first is the spring race and the second the summer or fall return.

• Tony Stewart, six: Dover, Michigan, New Hampshire (the July race), Dover again, Martinsville (the fall race) and Homestead.
• Rusty Wallace, four: Bristol (spring), Pocono (the second date), Michigan (August) and Bristol again in August.
• Bobby Labonte, four: Rockingham (spring), Indianapolis, Darlington (the Southern 500) and Charlotte (fall).
• Jeff Burton, four: Las Vegas, Daytona (the July Pepsi 400), New Hampshire (the September race) and Phoenix.
• Jeff Gordon, three: Talladega (spring), Sonoma and Richmond (the September race).
• Two each: Dale Earnhardt (Atlanta in spring and Talladega in the fall), Dale Earnhardt Jr. (Texas and Richmond in May), Dale Jarrett (the Daytona 500 and Rockingham in October) and Jeremy Mayfield (California and the first Pocono race).
• One each: Ward Burton (Darlington in spring), Mark Martin (Martinsville in spring), Matt Kenseth (the Coca-Cola 600), Steve Park (Watkins Glen) and Jerry Nadeau (the Atlanta finale).

Dale Jarrett opened the year by winning the Daytona 500 from the pole in a Ford, and the win also paid him the Winston No Bull 5 million-dollar bonus. Jeff Burton and Dale Earnhardt collected the same bonus later in the year, Earnhardt's coming with his fall Talladega win. Jarrett would not win again until Rockingham in October, and he finished fourth in points.

The hardest part of the year happened at New Hampshire. Adam Petty, 19, who had made his only Cup start at Texas that spring, qualifying 33rd and finishing 40th with a blown engine, and who the season article calls the first fourth-generation athlete in professional sports history, was killed at the track in May. Kenny Irwin Jr. died there on July 7 in a practice crash in Turn 3, two days before the thatlook.com 300 that this archive holds. Irwin's teammate Sterling Marlin declined to qualify after the crash, took a provisional and finished 25th, a lap down. When the series returned to the track in September, NASCAR ran the race with restrictor plates, the metal plates that sit under the carburetor to choke airflow and cut horsepower. The season article calls it the only Cup race outside the superspeedways to run plates since the 358 cubic inch engine formula was adopted. The Brickyard 400 on August 5 fell on what would have been Irwin's 31st birthday and was run in his memory; Bobby Labonte won it.

The rookie class was the strongest in years. Dale Earnhardt Jr. won at Texas in his 12th Cup start and again at Richmond in May, and became the first driver to win The Winston all-star race as a rookie. Matt Kenseth answered by winning the Coca-Cola 600, the first rookie to take that race, and the season article records 2000 as the first year in NASCAR history in which two rookies won. Kenseth, with more consistency, took Rookie of the Year by a narrow margin, with Dave Blaney third in the voting. Elsewhere, Jeff Gordon became the 11th driver to reach 50 Cup wins, Steve Park won his first race on the road course at Watkins Glen, and Jerry Nadeau won his first at the Atlanta finale after Labonte's title was already sealed.

The races this archive keeps are the ones whose Wikipedia articles cite an old Racin.net practice or qualifying sheet. They run from round 11 to round 32, so they miss the Daytona opener and the Atlanta finale but cover the middle of the year and most of the stretch run. Read together they hold four of Stewart's six wins, two of Wallace's four, two of Burton's four, and single wins for Earnhardt Jr., Park and Jarrett. Rusty Wallace started from the pole in five of the eleven.

• Round 11, Pontiac Excitement 400, Richmond, May 6: Dale Earnhardt Jr. won from Rusty Wallace's pole, his second win as a rookie.
• Round 13, MBNA Platinum 400, Dover, June 4: Tony Stewart won; Wallace again on the pole.
• Round 14, Kmart 400, Michigan, June 11: Stewart won from Bobby Labonte's pole, back-to-back wins one week apart.
• Round 17, Pepsi 400, Daytona, July 1: Jeff Burton won the night race; Dale Jarrett took the pole.
• Round 18, thatlook.com 300, New Hampshire, July 9: Stewart won on the weekend of Irwin's death; Wallace on the pole.
• Round 21, Global Crossing @ The Glen, Watkins Glen, August 13: Steve Park won from Labonte's pole.
• Round 22, Pepsi 400 presented by Meijer, Michigan, August 20: Rusty Wallace won from Earnhardt Jr.'s pole.
• Round 23, goracing.com 500, Bristol, August 26: Wallace won from his own pole under the lights.
• Round 28, NAPA Autocare 500, Martinsville, October 1: Stewart won from his own pole.
• Round 31, Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn 400, Rockingham, October 22: Dale Jarrett won; Jeremy Mayfield started first.
• Round 32, Checker Auto Parts/Dura Lube 500k, Phoenix, November 5: Jeff Burton won from Wallace's pole, the last archived race before Labonte clinched at Homestead.

The archive does not pretend to be a season record. It is a set of eleven windows onto the year, and this page is the frame around them. For the full 34-race schedule, standings and race-by-race notes, the season's Wikipedia article listed below remains the reference this site was checked against.