1988 Pepsi Firecracker 400
The 1988 Pepsi Firecracker 400 was the 15th stock car race of the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 30th iteration of the event. The race was held on Saturday, July 2, 1988, before an audience of 83,000 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 one of the closest finishes in NASCAR Winston Cup Series history, Melling Racing driver Bill Elliott was able to beat out Morgan–McClure Motorsports driver Rick Wilson by a distance of to take his 26th career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his third victory of the season. To fill out the top three, Jackson Bros. Motorsports driver Phil Parsons would finish third.
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, June 30, at 10:00 AM EST. Each driver would have one lap to set a time. During the first round, the top 20 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 Friday, July 1, at 11:00 AM EST. As with the first round, each driver would have one lap to set a time. For this specific race, positions 21-40 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; up to two provisionals were given.Darrell Waltrip, driving for Hendrick Motorsports, would win the pole, setting a time of 46.435 and an average speed of in the first round.
Ten drivers would fail to qualify.