1988 Motorcraft Quality Parts 500
The 1988 Motorcraft Quality Parts 500 was the fourth stock car race of the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 29th iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, March 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. On the final restart of the race with three laps left in the race, Richard Childress Racing driver Dale Earnhardt would manage to pull away from the field, completing a dominant performance where he would lead 270 laps. The victory was Earnhardt's 32nd career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his first victory of the season. To fill out the top three, Blue Max Racing driver Rusty Wallace and Hendrick Motorsports driver Darrell Waltrip would finish second and third, respectively.
Background
Atlanta Motor Speedway 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 originally scheduled to be split into two rounds. The first round was scheduled to be held on Friday, March 18, at 3:00 PM EST. Originally, the first 20 positions were going to be determined by first round qualifying, with positions 21-40 meant to be determined the following day on Saturday, March 19. However, due to rain, the first round was cancelled. As a result, qualifying was condensed into one round for all starting grid spots in the race, which was run on Saturday. 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.Geoff Bodine, driving for Hendrick Motorsports, would win the pole, setting a time of 31.022 and an average speed of in the first round.
11 drivers would fail to qualify.