1987 Pepsi Firecracker 400
The 1987 Pepsi Firecracker 400 was the 15th stock car race of the 1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 29th iteration of the event. The race was held on Saturday, July 4, 1987, before an audience of 85,000 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.
In what is considered to be one of the most confusing finishes in NASCAR history, Stavola Brothers Racing's Bobby Allison managed to pass 12 cars in the span of five laps heading into the final lap of the race. Mistakenly, Allison was scored a lap down by the time the final lap started both on the track and by commentators; as a result, drivers behind Allison at the time, which included owner-drivers Buddy Baker and Dave Marcis, let Allison increase his gap between them as most thought Allison was a lap down. By the time the error was realized, Allison had a four second lead over Baker, taking the victory while drivers behind them wrecked for what they thought was the presumed battle for the lead. The victory was Allison's 83rd career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his only victory of the season. To fill out the top three, the aforementioned Baker and Marcis 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 Thursday, 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 Friday, July 3, at 11:00 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.Davey Allison, driving for Ranier-Lundy Racing, managed to win the pole, setting a time of 45.435 and an average speed of in the first round.
Four drivers failed to qualify.