1989 Budweiser 500
The 1989 Budweiser 500 was the 11th stock car race of the 1989 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 21st iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, June 4, 1989, before an audience of 66,000 in Dover, Delaware at Dover Downs International Speedway, a 1-mile permanent oval-shaped racetrack. The race took the scheduled 500 laps to complete. On the final restart with seven laps left in the race, Richard Childress Racing driver Dale Earnhardt would manage to pull away from the field, completing a dominant performance where Earnhardt led 456 laps of the race. The victory was Earnhardt's 36th career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his second victory of the season. To fill out the top three, Roush Racing driver Mark Martin and Hendrick Motorsports driver Ken Schrader would finish second and third, respectively.
Background
Dover Downs International Speedway is an oval race track in Dover, Delaware, United States that has held at least two NASCAR races since it opened in 1969. In addition to NASCAR, the track also hosted USAC and the NTT IndyCar Series. The track features one layout, a 1-mile concrete oval, with 24° banking in the turns and 9° banking on the straights. The speedway is owned and operated by Dover Motorsports.The track, nicknamed "The Monster Mile", was built in 1969 by Melvin Joseph of Melvin L. Joseph Construction Company, Inc., with an asphalt surface, but was replaced with concrete in 1995. Six years later in 2001, the track's capacity moved to 135,000 seats, making the track have the largest capacity of sports venue in the mid-Atlantic. In 2002, the name changed to Dover International Speedway from Dover Downs International Speedway after Dover Downs Gaming and Entertainment split, making Dover Motorsports. From 2007 to 2009, the speedway worked on an improvement project called "The Monster Makeover", which expanded facilities at the track and beautified the track. After the 2014 season, the track's capacity was reduced to 95,500 seats.
Entry list
' denotes rookie driver.Qualifying
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Friday, June 2, at 3:00 PM 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 Saturday, June 3, at 11:30 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.Mark Martin, driving for Roush Racing, would win the pole, setting a time of 24.933 and an average speed of in the first round.
No drivers would fail to qualify.