1996 First Union 400
The 1996 First Union 400 was the seventh stock car race of the 1996 NASCAR Winston Cup Series and the 46th and to date, final iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, April 14, 1996, in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina at the North Wilkesboro Speedway, a oval short track. The race took the scheduled 400 laps to complete. In the final laps of the race, Hendrick Motorsports driver Terry Labonte would manage to take advantage of a late-race restart with 20 to go and pull away to take his 17th career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his first victory of the season. To fill out the top three, Hendrick Motorsports driver Jeff Gordon and Richard Childress Racing driver Dale Earnhardt would finish second and third, respectively.
Background
North Wilkesboro Speedway is a short oval racetrack located on U.S. Route 421, about five miles east of the town of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, or 80 miles north of Charlotte. It measures and features a unique uphill backstretch and downhill frontstretch. It has previously held races in NASCAR's top three series, including 93 Winston Cup Series races. The track, a NASCAR original, operated from 1949, NASCAR's inception, until the track's original closure in 1996. The speedway briefly reopened in 2010 and hosted several stock car series races before closing again in the spring of 2011. It was re-opened in August 2022 for grassroots racing.Entry list
' denotes rookie driver.Qualifying
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Friday, April 12, at 3:00 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, April 13, at 9:30 AM EST. As with the first round, each driver would have one lap to set a time. For this specific race, positions 26-32 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.Terry Labonte, driving for Hendrick Motorsports, would win the pole, setting a time of 19.287 and an average speed of.
Five drivers would fail to qualify: Dave Marcis, Randy MacDonald, Mike Wallace, Ward Burton, and Bobby Hillin Jr.