The 1987 Atlanta Journal 500 was the 29th and final stock car race of the 1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 28th iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, November 22, 1987, before an audience of 70,000 in Hampton, Georgia, at Atlanta International Raceway, a 1.522 miles (2.449 km) permanent asphalt quad-oval intermediate speedway. The race took the scheduled 328 laps to complete.
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-mile (2.48 km) where before it was 1.522-mile (2.449 km). The project made the track one of the fastest on the NASCAR circuit.
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Friday, November 20, at 2:00 PM EST. Each driver had one lap to set a time. During the first round, the top 20 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, November 21, at 10:30 AM EST. As with the first round, each driver had one lap to set a time. For this specific race, positions 21-40 were decided on time,[3] 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, managed to win the pole, setting a time of 31.428 and an average speed of 174.341 miles per hour (280.575 km/h) in the first round.[4]
