1987 Busch 500

The 1987 Busch 500 was the 20th stock car race of the 1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 27th iteration of the event. The race was held on Saturday, August 22, 1987, before an audience of 48,477 in Bristol, Tennessee, at Bristol International Speedway, a 0.533 miles (0.858 km) permanent oval-shaped racetrack. The race took the scheduled 500 laps to complete.

At race's end, Richard Childress Racing's Dale Earnhardt managed to dominate a majority of the race, leading 415 laps to take his 29th career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his ninth victory of the season. With the victory, Earnhardt was able to increase his driver's championship lead over Bill Elliott to 545 points. To fill out the top three, Blue Max Racing's Rusty Wallace and Bud Moore Engineering's Ricky Rudd finished second and third, respectively.

Background
The Bristol Motor Speedway, formerly known as Bristol International Raceway and Bristol Raceway, is a NASCAR short track venue located in Bristol, Tennessee. Constructed in 1960, it held its first NASCAR race on July 30, 1961. Despite its short length, Bristol is among the most popular tracks on the NASCAR schedule because of its distinct features, which include extraordinarily steep banking, an all concrete surface, two pit roads, and stadium-like seating. It has also been named one of the loudest NASCAR tracks.

Entry list

 * (R) denotes rookie driver.

Qualifying
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Friday, August 21, at 7:35 PM EST. Each driver had one lap to set a time. During the first round, the top 15 drivers in the round were 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, August 22, at 1:00 PM EST. As with the first round, each driver had one lap to set a time. For this specific race, positions 16-30 were 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.

Terry Labonte, driving for Junior Johnson & Associates, managed to win the pole, setting a time of 16.576 and an average speed of 115.758 mph in the first round.

Four drivers failed to qualify.

Standings after the race

 * Drivers' Championship standings
 * Note: Only the first 10 positions are included for the driver standings.