1992 Hanes 500

The 1992 Hanes 500 was the eighth stock car race of the 1992 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 43rd iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, April 26, 1992, before an audience of 48,300 in Martinsville, Virginia at Martinsville Speedway, a 0.526 mi permanent oval-shaped short track. The race took the scheduled 500 laps to complete. In a race marred with rear axle failures, Roush Racing driver Mark Martin would manage to keep his car intact and hold off the field on the final restart with four to go to take his sixth career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his first victory of the season. To fill out the top three, Junior Johnson & Associates driver Sterling Marlin and owner-driver Darrell Waltrip would finish second and third, respectively.

Background
Martinsville Speedway is an NASCAR-owned stock car racing track located in Henry County, in Ridgeway, Virginia, just to the south of Martinsville. At 0.526 miles (0.847 km) in length, it is the shortest track in the NASCAR Cup Series. The track was also one of the first paved oval tracks in NASCAR, being built in 1947 by H. Clay Earles. It is also the only remaining race track that has been on the NASCAR circuit from its beginning in 1948.

Entry list

 * (R) denotes rookie driver.

Qualifying
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Friday, April 24, 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, April 25, at 12:30 PM EST. As with the first round, each driver would have one lap to set a time. For this specific race, positions 21-30 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; which was usually two. If needed, a past champion who did not qualify on either time or provisionals could use a champion's provisional, adding one more spot to the field.

Darrell Waltrip, driving for his own Darrell Waltrip Motorsports team, would win the pole, setting a time of 20.371 and an average speed of 92.956 mph in the first round.

Two drivers would fail to qualify.

Standings after the race

 * Drivers' Championship standings


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