1987 Wrangler Jeans Indigo 400
The 1987 Wrangler Jeans Indigo 400 was the 22nd stock car race of the 1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 30th iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, September 13, 1987, before an audience of 30,000 in Richmond, Virginia, at Richmond Fairgrounds Raceway, a D-shaped oval. The race took the scheduled 400 laps to complete.
Coming back from a penalty and avoiding several wrecks, Richard Childress Racing's Dale Earnhardt managed to dominate the late stages of the race, leading 156 of the final 219 laps to take his 31st career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his 11th and final victory of the season. With the victory, Earnhardt was able to increase his driver's championship lead over Bill Elliott to 608 points, a lead that was seen as virtually insurmountable with seven races left in the season. To fill out the top three, Hendrick Motorsports' Darrell Waltrip and Bud Moore Engineering's Ricky Rudd finished second and third, respectively.
Background
Richmond International Raceway is a 3/4-mile, D-shaped, asphalt race track located just outside Richmond, Virginia in Henrico County. It hosts the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and Xfinity Series. Known as "America's premier short track", it formerly hosted a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race, an IndyCar Series race, and two USAC sprint car races.Entry list
' denotes rookie driver.Qualifying
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Friday, September 11, at 3:00 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, September 12, at 11:30 AM EST. As with the first round, each driver had one lap to set a time. For this specific race, positions 21-30 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.Alan Kulwicki, driving for his own AK Racing team, managed to win the pole, setting a time of 20.746 and an average speed of in the first round.
Four drivers failed to qualify.