1989 Miller High Life 400 (Richmond)

The 1989 Miller High Life 400 was the 22nd stock car race of the 1989 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 32nd iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, September 10, 1989, before an audience of 60,000 in Richmond, Virginia, at Richmond International Raceway, a 0.75 miles (1.21 km) D-shaped oval. The race took the scheduled 400 laps to complete. Gambling on fuel strategy, Blue Max Racing driver Rusty Wallace would manage to run the last 129 laps of the race on one tank of fuel to take his 16th career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his sixth and final victory of the season. To fill out the top three, Richard Childress Racing driver Dale Earnhardt and Hendrick Motorsports driver Geoff Bodine would finish second and third, respectively.

Background
Richmond International Raceway (RIR) is a 3/4-mile (1.2 km), D-shaped, asphalt race track located just outside Richmond, Virginia in Henrico County. It hosts the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series and Xfinity Series. Known as "America's premier short track", it formerly hosted a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race, an IndyCar Series race, and two USAC sprint car races.

Entry list

 * (R) denotes rookie driver.

Qualifying
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Thursday, September 8, 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 Friday, September 9, 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 21-34 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 were given.

Bill Elliott, driving for Melling Racing, would win the pole, setting a time of 22.289 and an average speed of 121.136 mph in the first round.

Greg Sacks 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.