1987 Michigan 500
motor car race
The 1987 Michigan 500, the seventh running of the event, was held at the Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan, on Sunday, August 2, 1987. Branded as the 1987 Marlboro 500 for sponsorship reasons, the race was won by Michael Andretti, his first Michigan 500 victory. The event was race number 9 of 15 in the 1987 CART PPG Indy Car World Series.
Background
In November 1986, the Michigan 500 was renamed the Marlboro 500. It was the first title sponsorship for the race since Norton withdrew their sponsorship following the 1982 race.
Al Unser won the 1987 Indianapolis 500. Unser got the job at Team Penske after Danny Ongais suffered a concussion during practice. Penske entered cars for both Unser and Ongais in the Michigan 500.
Entering the Michigan 500, Tom Sneva was fired by his Mike Curb-owned team after his wife complained that the team was behind in Sneva's paychecks. On Monday July 27, Sneva was informed by Curb's lawyer that he was fired from the team.
“1987 Michigan 500” enters the record as motor car race. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Michigan, motor and race can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q120798933. Authority coordinates are 42.066, -84.241. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1986 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “1987 Michigan 500” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.