1987 AC Delco 500
The 1987 AC Delco 500 was the 27th stock car race of the 1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 23rd iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, October 25, 1987, before an audience of 60,000 in Rockingham, North Carolina, at North Carolina Speedway, a permanent high-banked racetrack.
By race's end, Melling Racing's Bill Elliott managed to dominate the late stages of the race, leading the final 218 of the 271 laps to take his 22nd career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his fifth victory of the season. To fill out the top three, Richard Childress Racing's Dale Earnhardt and Hendrick Motorsports' Darrell Waltrip finished second and third, respectively.
By starting the race, Dale Earnhardt clinched the NASCAR Winston Cup Series driver's championship, after completing a dominant season. The championship was Earnhardt's third overall driver's championship and his second in a row.
Background
North Carolina Motor Speedway was opened as a flat, one-mile oval on October 31, 1965. In 1969, the track was extensively reconfigured to a high-banked, D-shaped oval just over one mile in length. In 1997, North Carolina Motor Speedway merged with Penske Motorsports, and was renamed North Carolina Speedway. Shortly thereafter, the infield was reconfigured, and competition on the infield road course, mostly by the SCCA, was discontinued. Currently, the track is home to the Fast Track High Performance Driving School.Entry list
' denotes rookie driver.Qualifying
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Thursday, October 22, at 4:00 PM 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 Saturday, October 23, at 2:00 PM 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 were given.Davey Allison, driving for Ranier-Lundy Racing, managed to win the pole, setting a time of 25.144 and an average speed of in the first round.
Two drivers failed to qualify. One driver who failed to qualify, D. Wayne Strout, crashed his car in a Friday morning practice session. Strout later reported to The Charlotte Observer that the crash was severe enough to the point where he couldn't remember the crash.