1987 Talladega 500
17th race of the 1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Series

The 1987 Talladega 500 was the 17th stock car race of the 1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 19th iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, July 26, 1987, before an audience of 105,000 in Lincoln, Alabama at Alabama International Motor Speedway, a 2.66 miles (4.28 km) permanent triangle-shaped superspeedway. The race took the scheduled 188 laps to complete.
By race's end, Melling Racing's Bill Elliott managed to fend off a late-race charge by Ranier-Lundy Racing's Davey Allison in the final laps of the race to take his 19th career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his second victory of the season. To fill out the top three, the aforementioned Davey Allison and Richard Childress Racing's Dale Earnhardt finished second and third, respectively.
Background
Talladega Superspeedway, originally known as Alabama International Motor Superspeedway (AIMS), is a motorsports complex located north of Talladega, Alabama. It is located on the former Anniston Air Force Base in the small city of Lincoln. The track is a tri-oval and was constructed in the 1960s by the International Speedway Corporation, a business controlled by the France family. Talladega is most known for its steep banking and the unique location of the start/finish line that's located just past the exit to pit road. The track currently hosts the NASCAR series such as the NASCAR Cup Series, Xfinity Series and the Camping World Truck Series.
The public source identifies “1987 Talladega 500” as 17th race of the 1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Series. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Talladega, 17th and race.
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This entry incorporates text from “1987 Talladega 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.