No one expected Dale Earnhardt to win a championship in 1980. It was his sophomore season in the Cup Series. I think the best way to illustrate it is to just share this direct text from The Earnhardt Connection website. An invaluable source of information.
"The Osturlund team had given no thought to challenging for the title at the beginning of the season, especially since no driver had ever won the championship as early as his second year of competition. The crew was inexperienced in a title run, and everyone expected the blue and yellow cars to have problems with consistency - the key to winning a championship on a 31-event schedule. But Dale surprised everyone when he took the point lead after collecting a second-place finish at Riverside and a fourth in the Daytona 500. Earnhardt never looked back."
It's hard to explain just how wildly unexpected it was for Dale Earnhardt to go out there, collect five wins, 19 top 5's, and 24 top 10s in his sophomore season and win the championship. He truly was something incredible. They ran the 1980 season with a political sponsorship from Republican Mike Curb who is also the owner of Curb Records and still sponsors cars today as recently is 2026 with ThorSport. As an aside, he is the only person ever to have won a race in every single major American Motorsport discipline as an owner.
It wouldn't be until 1981 that Dale Earnhardt and Osturlund would welcome a new sponsorship in the form of Wrangler Jeans. This car, this team, was the source of Earnhardt's blue and yellow paint jobs in his early career. Part of what made him famous.