1988 Atlanta Journal 500
The 1988 Atlanta Journal 500 was the 29th and final stock car race of the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 29th iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, November 20, 1988, before an audience of 70,000 in Hampton, Georgia, at Atlanta International Raceway, a permanent asphalt quad-oval intermediate speedway. The race took the scheduled 328 laps to complete.
For the battle of the race's victory, Blue Max Racing's Rusty Wallace managed to dominate a majority of the race, leading 166 laps en route to his tenth career Winston Cup Series and his sixth and final victory of the season, earning the maximum points possible for a driver to gain in a race. To fill out the top three, Ranier-Lundy Racing's Davey Allison and Stavola Brothers Racing's Mike Alexander finished second and third, respectively.
In the battle for the NASCAR Winston Cup Series championship, championship leader Bill Elliott was able to defend his lead in the championship, needing an 18th place or better finish in order to guarantee the championship. While Elliott was not a contender for the race's victory, suffering numerous problems during the race, he was able to maintain a consistent position running around 11th-15th position, finishing 11th to secure the championship, winning the championship over Wallace by 24 points.
The race was the final start for 3-time Winston Cup champion Cale Yarborough, who managed to round out his driving career with a Top 10 finish.
Background
Atlanta International Raceway is a 1.522-mile race track in Hampton, Georgia, United States, 20 miles 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.
Entry list
' - denotes rookie driver.Qualifying
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Friday, November 18, at 2:00 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, November 19, at 10:30 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 were given.Rusty Wallace, driving for Blue Max Racing, managed to win the pole, setting a time of 30.525 and an average speed of in the first round.
11 drivers failed to qualify.