1994 Purolator 500

The 1994 Purolator 500 was the fourth stock car race of the 1994 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 35th iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, March 13, 1994, in Hampton, Georgia at Atlanta Motor Speedway, a 1.522 mi permanent asphalt quad-oval intermediate speedway. The race took the scheduled 328 laps to complete. At race's end, Robert Yates Racing driver Ernie Irvan would manage to complete a dominant performance for the majority of the race to take his 11th career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory, his second victory of the season, and his second straight victory. To fill out the top three, Wood Brothers Racing driver Morgan Shepherd and owner-driver Darrell Waltrip would finish second and third, respectively.

Background
Atlanta Motor Speedway (formerly Atlanta International Raceway) is a 1.522-mile race track in Hampton, Georgia, United States, 20 miles (32 km) south of Atlanta. It has annually hosted NASCAR Winston Cup Series stock car races since its inauguration in 1960.

The venue was bought by Speedway Motorsports in 1990. In 1994, 46 condominiums were built over the northeastern side of the track. In 1997, to standardize the track with Speedway Motorsports' other two intermediate ovals, the entire track was almost completely rebuilt. The frontstretch and backstretch were swapped, and the configuration of the track was changed from oval to quad-oval, with a new official length of 1.54 mi where before it was 1.522 mi. The project made the track one of the fastest on the NASCAR circuit.

Entry list

 * (R) - denotes rookie driver.

Qualifying
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Friday, March 11, at 2:30 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, March 12, at 10:30 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 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.

Loy Allen Jr., driving for TriStar Motorsports, would win the pole, setting a time of 30.405 and an average speed of 180.207 mph in the first round.

Eight drivers would fail to qualify.

Standings after the race

 * Drivers' Championship standings


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