1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Series

A famous quote stemmed from this move, which crew chief Jeff Hammond describes in his book Real Men Work In the Pits went like this: "I finally got me a thoroughbred."

– Junior Johnson The rest of "silly season" looked like this among full-time teams: Terry Labonte left the No.

Those who officially threw their hat in the ring for NASCAR Rookie of the Year in 1987 would be: Davey Allison, Steve Christman (No.

Ron Bouchard, Trevor Boys, Eddie Bierschwale and a host of others would battle for the remaining open spots.

Bill Elliott and Davey Allison won the poles for both races, respectively, as a result of their speeds in qualifying on February 9.

[1] Top Ten Results The Miller High Life 400 was held March 8 at Richmond Fairgrounds Raceway.

Top Ten Results Failed to qualify: Ron Sheppard (#34), Tony Spanos (#48), Lake Speed (#83), Bob Hollar (#02) The Motorcraft Quality Parts 500 was held March 15 at Atlanta International Raceway.

Ricky Rudd managed to pull away from Benny Parsons to take his first victory of the season, and seventh of his career.

[2][3] Top Ten Results Failed to qualify: Jerry Holden (#68), Bobby Wawak (#74) The TranSouth 500 was held March 29 at Darlington Raceway.

At one point in the race, Benny Parsons, having hit the wall early, attempted to make a pit stop only for crew chief Harry Hyde to tell him that the crew was in the middle of a break for ice cream, inspiring a scene in the film Days of Thunder, where fictional driver Cole Trickle, played by Tom Cruise, is denied a pit stop due to his team eating ice cream.

[4] Top Ten Results Failed to qualify: Mike Potter (#81), Mark Stahl (#82) The First Union 400 was held April 5 at North Wilkesboro Speedway.

Dale Earnhardt won the race in dominating fashion, leading 319 out of 500 laps to claim his second straight victory and fourth of the season.

[5] Terry Labonte was injured the previous week at Darlington, and was relieved by Brett Bodine at an early pit stop.

This race was remembered for a near-tragedy early when Bobby Allison flew into the fence and nearly landed in the front stretch grandstands.

Allison's crash caused a 2½ hour red flag to repair the catch fence, and the race was shortened to 178 laps due to darkness.

At one point, Bill Elliott's car nicked the rear of Earnhardt's, sending the latter into the infield grass.

21 years before Marcos Ambrose made his debut in the series, Allan Grice became the first Australian driver to qualify for a Winston Cup race.

Top Ten Results The Miller High Life 500 was held June 14 at Pocono International Raceway.

Richard Petty, not fully recovered from rib injuries sustained in a crash at the Miller High Life 500 at Pocono a week earlier, ran only the pace lap before giving way to Joe Ruttman while Petty moved to the ESPN broadcast booth.

Top Ten Results The Pepsi Firecracker 400 was held July 4 at Daytona International Speedway.

In this race, smaller carburetors (the size used in the Busch Series) were mandated by NASCAR at Daytona and Talladega in an attempt to slow the cars.

Final results properly restored the missing lap to Allison's total, and he was credited with the victory.

On the final lap, Ken Schrader got loose coming out of turn four, spun, and barrel-rolled in the tri-oval just shy of the start/finish line.

Rusty Wallace had a commanding lead in the final laps of the race, but prior to the white flag, he started running out of fuel.

Top Ten Results The Champion Spark Plug 400 was held August 16 at Michigan International Speedway.

(It's believed he purposely over-revved it to blow it up, because he was suffering from severe exhaustion caused by what turned out to be a then-unknown bout with the AIDS virus.)

Members of the print media covering the race were witnesses to the Northwest Airlines Flight 255 plane crash later in the day.

Top Ten Results The Wrangler Jeans Indigo 400 was held September 13 at Richmond Fairgrounds Raceway.

A late race caution set up an intense 3-lap sprint among Dale Earnhardt, Terry Labonte and Darrell Waltrip.

Top Ten Results The AC Delco 500 was held October 25 at North Carolina Motor Speedway.