Why the 1988 Pontiac Excitement 400 at Richmond Wasn't Just another NASCAR Cup Race

• Neil Bonnett's win at Richmond in 1988 would be the last on Richmond’s half-mile layout.

• The victory was monumental for Hoosier as it ended a streak of 526 straight Cup wins by Goodyear.

• Bonnett led the final 48 (of 400) laps, outrunning Ricky Rudd by 1.12 seconds.

Thirty-five years ago, NASCAR Cup Series drivers and teams converged on Richmond Raceway (then Richmond Fairgrounds Raceway) for the second race of the 1988 season.

The race, named the Pontiac Excitement 400, was more anticipated than most on the short track that had hosted Cup racing since 1953.

Several factors were in play:

• The race would be the last on Richmond’s half-mile layout. When teams returned to the track in September, they would be racing at a totally renovated facility, one expanded to three-quarters of a mile.

• It was the year of the Goodyear vs. Hoosier tire war, and drivers were running on the raw edge as the two tirebuilders tried to outrun each other in speed while tiptoeing along the edge of safety.

• Although Bobby Allison had won the season-opening Daytona 500 the previous week, Richard Petty was in the headlines. During the 500, he had endured one of the roughest wrecks of his long career, flipping several times along the Daytona frontstretch before being hammered by Brett Bodine’s car. Some wondered if he might start the Richmond race and call on a relief driver a few laps in.

• It was cold. Brutally cold. Owner of the season’s second race for years, Richmond expected occasional rough weather, but race day—Feb. 21—brought temperatures in the 30s and jackets out of the team haulers.

All things considered, it was a jumble of a day, and no one should have been surprised when there was an unexpected winner.

Neil Bonnett was making only his second Cup start since suffering a broken right leg in a crash at Charlotte Motor Speedway the previous October. Bonnett hadn’t won a race in 16 months when he took the Richmond green flag in a Rahmoc Enterprises Pontiac.

Bonnett led the final 48 (of 400) laps, outrunning Ricky Rudd by 1.12 seconds.

There was post-race controversy, with Rudd claiming Bonnett had lost two laps during a green-flag pit stop and that only one of those laps had been made up. NASCAR’s review left Bonnett, who rode on Hoosier tires, with the win, however.

The victory was monumental for Hoosier as it ended a streak of 526 straight Cup wins by Goodyear.

The tire war would continue through the season, with both manufacturers recording successes and failures—and numerous drivers suffering injuries—before Hoosier pulled out of Cup racing in May 1989.

And Richard Petty? Despite anxiety that followed his Daytona crash, the old warrior raced hard at Richmond, finishing third on the lead lap.

It was only appropriate, then, that Petty, who won 13 races on the old half-mile, would be called on to begin dismantling the track with a bulldozer only minutes after the checkered flag.

The Richmond victory was the next-to-last of Bonnett’s career. He was killed while practicing for the 1994 Daytona 500.