[1][2] To fill out the top three, Junior Johnson & Associates' Terry Labonte and Ranier-Lundy Racing's Davey Allison finished second and third, respectively.

In the driver's championship battle for the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, championship leader Bill Elliott maintained a 79-point lead over second-place driver Rusty Wallace heading into the final race of the season, the 1988 Atlanta Journal 500.

Phoenix International Raceway – also known as PIR – is a one-mile, low-banked tri-oval race track located in Avondale, Arizona.

The raceway was originally constructed with a 2.5 mi (4.0 km) road course that ran both inside and outside of the main tri-oval.

Geoff Bodine, driving for Hendrick Motorsports, managed to win the pole, setting a time of 29.220 and an average speed of 123.203 miles per hour (198.276 km/h) in the first round.