Fourth race of the 1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Series
Motor car race
The 1987 Motorcraft Quality Parts 500 was the fourth stock car race of the 1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 28th iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, March 15, 1987, before an audience of 60,000 in Hampton, Georgia, at Atlanta International Raceway, a permanent asphalt quad-oval intermediate speedway.
After the dominant car of the day, Dale Earnhardt, suffered mechanical problems that put him out of contention for the race, a restart with eight laps left in the race left a four car battle for the victory. By race's end, Bud Moore Engineering's Ricky Rudd managed to pull away to take his seventh career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his first victory of the season. To fill out the top three, Hendrick Motorsports' Benny Parsons and Blue Max Racing's Rusty Wallace finished second and third, respectively.
Background.
Atlanta Motor Speedway (formerly Atlanta International Raceway) is a 1.522-mile race track in Hampton, Georgia, United States, 20 miles (32 km) south of Atlanta. It has annually hosted NASCAR Winston Cup Series stock car races since its inauguration in 1960.
The venue was bought by Speedway Motorsports in 1990. In 1994, 46 condominiums were built over the northeastern side of the track. In 1997, to standardize the track with Speedway Motorsports' other two intermediate ovals, the entire track was almost completely rebuilt. The frontstretch and backstretch were swapped, and the configuration of the track was changed from oval to quad-oval, with a new official length of where before it was . The project made the track one of the fastest on the NASCAR circuit.
Qualifying.
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Friday, March 13, at 2:00 PM EST. Each driver would have one lap to set a time. During the first round, the top 20 drivers in the round would be guaranteed a starting spot in the race. If a driver was not able to guarantee a spot in the first round, they had the option to scrub their time from the first round and try and run a faster lap time in a second round qualifying run, held on Saturday, March 14, at 10:30 AM EST. As with the first round, each driver would have one lap to set a time. For this specific race, positions 21-40 would be decided on time, and depending on who needed it, a select amount of positions were given to cars who had not otherwise qualified but were high enough in owner's points; up to two were given.
Dale Earnhardt, driving for Richard Childress Racing, managed to win the pole, setting a time of 31.221 and an average speed of in the first round.
Two drivers failed to qualify.
Standings after the race.
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References.
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