1988 Budweiser 400
The 1988 Budweiser 400 was the 12th stock car race of the 1988 [NASCAR Winston Cup Series] season, the third race of the 1988 [NASCAR Winston West Series], and the 20th and final iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, June 12, 1988, before an audience of 72,000 in Riverside, California, at the short layout of Riverside International Raceway, a permanent road course layout at the track. The race took the scheduled 95 laps to complete. Following an initial scoring error, Blue Max Racing driver Rusty Wallace would manage to pull away on the final restart with five laps left in the race to take his fifth career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his first victory of the season. To fill out the top three, Junior Johnson & Associates driver Terry Labonte and King Racing driver Ricky Rudd would finish second and third, respectively.
The race was the final NASCAR Winston Cup Series race held at Riverside International Raceway before the track's closure in 1989.
Background
Riverside International Raceway was a motorsports race track and road course established in the Edgemont area of Riverside County, California, just east of the city limits of Riverside and east of Los Angeles, in 1957. In 1984, the raceway became part of the newly incorporated city of Moreno Valley. Riverside was noted for its hot, dusty environment and for being somewhat of a complicated and dangerous track for drivers. It was also considered one of the finest tracks in the United States.Entry list
' denotes rookie driver.Qualifying
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Friday, June 10, at 4:30 PM EST. Each driver would have one lap to set a time. During the first round, the top 25 drivers in the round would be 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, June 11, at 12:30 PM EST. As with the first round, each driver would have one lap to set a time. For this specific race, positions 26-40 would be 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; which was two for entries in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series and two extra provisionals for the NASCAR Winston West Series.Ricky Rudd, driving for King Racing, would win the pole, setting a time of 1:19.606 and an average speed of in the first round.
18 drivers would fail to qualify.