1986 Firecracker 400
The 1986 Firecracker 400 was the 15th stock car race of the 1986 NASCAR Winston Cup Series and the 28th iteration of the event. The race was held on Friday, July 4, 1986, before an audience of 65,000 in Daytona Beach, Florida at Daytona International Speedway, a 2.5 miles permanent triangular-shaped superspeedway. The race took the scheduled 160 laps to complete.
With eight laps left in the race, Dale Earnhardt blew an engine in front of the leader, Buddy Baker. Although Baker was able to avoid the wreck, in the race back to the line, Hendrick Motorsports' Tim Richmond was able to take the lead at the time of caution. On the final restart with three laps left, Richmond was able to hold off the field, securing his seventh career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his second victory of the season. To fill out the top three, Ellington Racing's Sterling Marlin and Stavola Brothers Racing's Bobby Hillin Jr. finished second and third, respectively.
Background
Daytona International Speedway is one of three superspeedways to hold NASCAR races, the other two being Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway. The standard track at Daytona International Speedway is a four-turn superspeedway that is 2.5 miles long. The track's turns are banked at 31 degrees, while the front stretch, the location of the finish line, is banked at 18 degrees.Entry list
' denotes rookie driver.Qualifying
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Wednesday, July 2, at 10:00 AM EST. Each driver had one lap to set a time. During the first round, the top 20 drivers in the round were 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 Thursday, July 3, at 10:00 AM EST. As with the first round, each driver had one lap to set a time. For this specific race, positions 21-40 were 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 provisionals were given.Cale Yarborough, driving for Ranier-Lundy Racing, won the pole, setting a time of 44.222 and an average speed of in the first round.
Seven drivers failed to qualify.