1988 The Budweiser at The Glen

The 1988 The Budweiser at The Glen was the 18th stock car race of the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the third iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, August 13, 1989, before an audience of 100,000 in Watkins Glen, New York, at the shortened layout of Watkins Glen International, a 2.428 mi permanent road course layout. In the final laps of the race, King Racing driver Ricky Rudd would manage to fend off Blue Max Racing driver Rusty Wallace to the finish to take his ninth career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his only victory of the season. To fill out the top three, the aforementioned Rusty Wallace and Melling Racing driver Bill Elliott would finish second and third, respectively.

Background
Watkins Glen International (nicknamed "The Glen") is an automobile race track located in Watkins Glen, New York at the southern tip of Seneca Lake. It was long known around the world as the home of the Formula One United States Grand Prix, which it hosted for twenty consecutive years (1961–1980), but the site has been home to road racing of nearly every class, including the World Sportscar Championship, Trans-Am, Can-Am, NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, the International Motor Sports Association and the IndyCar Series.

Initially, public roads in the village were used for the race course. In 1956 a permanent circuit for the race was built. In 1968 the race was extended to six hours, becoming the 6 Hours of Watkins Glen. The circuit's current layout has more or less been the same since 1971, although a chicane was installed at the uphill Esses in 1975 to slow cars through these corners, where there was a fatality during practice at the 1973 United States Grand Prix. The chicane was removed in 1985, but another chicane called the "Inner Loop" was installed in 1992 after J.D. McDuffie's fatal accident during the previous year's NASCAR Winston Cup event.

The circuit is known as the Mecca of North American road racing and is a very popular venue among fans and drivers. The facility is currently owned by International Speedway Corporation.

Entry list

 * (R) denotes rookie driver.

Qualifying
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Friday, August 12, at 1:00 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, August 13, 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 on time but were high enough in owner's points; up to two provisionals were given.

Geoff Bodine, driving for Hendrick Motorsports, would win the pole, setting a time of 1:12.537 and an average speed of 120.501 mph in the first round.

Phil Good was the only driver to fail to qualify.

Standings after the race

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