In the fall race at Richmond International Raceway in 1975, Richard Petty clinched his 6th Winston Cup (now Sprint Cup) Series title.

What is more amazing is that Petty finished last in the race and the event was not the final race of the season, there were still four more races to go that year.

Petty had an 827-point lead over Dave Marcis in the series standings which meant that Petty did not even have to run the final races of the season and he would still be crowned champion.

Of course, Petty ran those final races and he even got another win, for a total of 13 that year, at Bristol the following month before ending the season 722 points ahead of Marcis.

Petty won a jaw dropping $481,750.80 that year which was more than double what Marcis took home.

Darrell Waltrip won the Capital City 500 at Richmond Fairground Raceway, as it was known back then. So he celebrated alongside Petty after the race.

Waltrip started 2nd but struggled early on and fell three laps down. Dave Marcis, Lennie Pond and Cale Yarborough each led multiple times during the event but both Marcis and Yarborough fell out with engine issues.

Once those two were out of the picture, Pond took over the lead but got held up in the pits and lost a lap under caution. Then, he was black-flagged for a missing lugnut and lost another lap.

Waltrip had already managed to make up two laps on Pond under green and he took the lead on lap 376. He won the race by an entire lap over Pond who hung on for second place.

“I knew if the car held together, we’d have a chance,” Waltrip said, according to the book Forty Years Of Stock Car Racing by Greg Fielden. “You can never give up when you’re racing. Anything can happen.”

The win was the second of Waltrip’s career and the first with the DiGard team. He finished 7th in the point standings that year and then went on to win three Sprint Cup Series championships in 1981, 1982 and 1985.

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