The 1986 Goodwrench 500 was the third stock car race of the 1986 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 21st iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, March 2, 1986, before an audience of 47,500 in Rockingham, North Carolina, at North Carolina Motor Speedway, a 1.017 miles (1.637 km) permanent high-banked racetrack. The race took the scheduled 492 laps to complete.

By race's end, Hagan Enterprises' Terry Labonte managed to dominate a majority of the race, leading 306 laps and defending a late race charge by Mach 1 Racing's Harry Gant to take his fifth career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his only victory of the season.^[1][2] To fill out the top three, the aforementioned Harry Gant and owner-driver Richard Petty finished second and third, respectively.

North Carolina Motor Speedway was opened as a flat, one-mile oval on October 31, 1965. In 1969, the track was extensively reconfigured to a high-banked, D-shaped oval just over one mile in length. In 1997, North Carolina Motor Speedway merged with Penske Motorsports, and was renamed North Carolina Speedway. Shortly thereafter, the infield was reconfigured, and competition on the infield road course, mostly by the SCCA, was discontinued. Currently, the track is home to the Fast Track High Performance Driving School.

Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Thursday, February 27, at 2:30 PM EST. Each driver had one lap to set a time. During the first round, the top 20 drivers in the round were guaranteed a starting spot in the race. If a driver was not able to guarantee a spot in the first round, they had the option to scrub their time from the first round and try and run a faster lap time in a second round qualifying run, held on Friday, February 28, at 2:00 PM EST. As with the first round, each driver had one lap to set a time. For this specific race, positions 21-30 were decided on time,^[3] and depending on who needed it, a select amount of positions were given to cars who had not otherwise qualified but were high enough in owner's points in the previous season; up to two were given.

Terry Labonte, driving for Hagan Enterprises, managed to win the pole, setting a time of 25.017 and an average speed of 146.348 miles per hour (235.524 km/h) in the first round.^[4]

No drivers failed to qualify.