1978

Pos	Driver	Nat	Car	Pts	Wins	Share of the leader
1	Mario Andretti	American	Team Lotus	64	6
2	Ronnie Peterson	Swedish	Team Lotus	51	2
3	Carlos Reutemann	Argentine	Ferrari	48	4
4	Niki Lauda	Austrian	Brabham	44	2
5	Patrick Depailler	French	Tyrrell	34	1
6	John Watson	British	Brabham	25	0
7	Jody Scheckter	South African	Wolf	24	0
8	Jacques Laffite	French	Ligier	19	0
9	GVGilles Villeneuve	Canadian	Ferrari	17	1
10	Emerson Fittipaldi	Brazilian	Fittipaldi	17	0
11	AJAlan Jones	Australian	Williams	11	0
12	Riccardo Patrese	Italian	Arrows	11	0
13	James Hunt	British	McLaren	8	0
14	Patrick Tambay	French	McLaren	8	0
15	Didier Pironi	French	Tyrrell	7	0
16	Clay Regazzoni	Swiss	Shadow	4	0
17	Jean-Pierre Jabouille	French	Renault	3	0
18	HSHans-Joachim Stuck	German	Shadow	2	0
19	Vittorio Brambilla	Italian	Surtees	1	0
20	Derek Daly	Irish	Ensign	1	0
21	HRHector Rebaque	Mexican	Team Lotus	1	0
—	René Arnoux	French	Martini / Surtees	0	0
—	Michael Bleekemolen	Dutch	ATS	0	0
—	Eddie Cheever	American	Hesketh	0	0
—	Harald Ertl	Austrian	Ensign	0	0
—	BGBruno Giacomelli	Italian	McLaren	0	0
—	Jacky Ickx	Belgian	Ensign	0	0
—	Jean-Pierre Jarier	French	ATS / Team Lotus	0	0
—	Rupert Keegan	British	Surtees	0	0
—	Lamberto Leoni	Italian	Ensign	0	0
—	BLBrett Lunger	American	Ensign / McLaren	0	0
—	Jochen Mass	German	ATS	0	0
—	Arturo Merzario	Italian	Merzario	0	0
—	Danny Ongais	American	Ensign	0	0
—	Nelson Piquet	Brazilian	Brabham / Ensign / McLaren	0	0
—	Bobby Rahal	American	Wolf	0	0
—	Keke Rosberg	Finnish	ATS / Theodore / Wolf	0	0
—	Rolf Stommelen	German	Arrows	0	0

Read from the season’s final standings row, never summed from the race results. 17 of 38 entries in this table carry no championship position and are ruled below the placed field, ordered by points.

Read from the season’s final constructor standings row. A constructor scores through both of its cars, so these totals are not the sum of any one driver’s line above.

Both championship tables on this page are read from the season’s standings rows at round 16, the last round loaded, and neither is derived by adding up the race results. That distinction is the whole point: for most of the sport’s history only a driver’s best few results counted toward the title, a race stopped short paid half points, and a driver could be excluded from a championship he had scored in, so a table built by summing the results column would disagree with the championship as it was actually awarded. Positions are the source’s own; where it recorded none, the row prints a dash and sits below the placed field rather than being given a place it never held or dropped from the page. A points total is printed as it is stored, to two decimals where it needs them, because the sport has awarded half points and split shared drives since the 1950s and those fractions are real. The calendar is every round in the archive for 1978, in round order, with the winner taken from the classification code the source prints rather than from its sort key; three of the 1,161 races loaded were won by a shared car, and for those the calendar names one driver while the race classification credits both. The Cars column counts the rows in each race’s classification, which includes cars that retired, so it is entries with a recorded result rather than a count of cars that took the start. The drivers and constructors counted in the masthead are those that appear in a race result for 1978, not those that entered. The constructors’ championship has been awarded since 1958, so both tables exist for this season. 1978 is complete: all 16 rounds are loaded and both tables are final.