The 1988 Goodwrench 500 was the third stock car race of the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 23rd iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, March 6, 1988, before an audience of 53,600 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. In the closing laps of the race, RahMoc Enterprises driver Neil Bonnett would manage to make a late-race charge to the lead, passing for the lead with 20 laps left in the race to take his 18th and final career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his second and final victory of the season.^[1][2][3][4] To fill out the top three, owner-driver Lake Speed and Hagan Racing driver Sterling Marlin would finish second and third, respectively.

The victory was the second NASCAR Winston Cup victory for tire company Hoosier Racing Tire, who had entered the series as a direct competitor to the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company starting at the 1988 Daytona 500. With this victory, Hoosier Racing Tire had managed to earn three straight victories, including an exhibition race victory at the 1988 Goodyear NASCAR 500 at Calder Park Raceway; all with Neil Bonnett. The feat was considered a major victory for Hoosier Racing Tire for two main reasons; the first was that before the 1988 season, Goodyear had a monopoly on NASCAR's tire supply since the 1971 season. The second was that for the entirety of the race itself, the contenders for the race victory all exclusively used Hoosier tires.^[5][6] In interviews, CEO of Hoosier Racing Tire, Bob Newton would both praise Hoosier and taunt Goodyear, stating that "This wasn't just a win, this was a runaway."^[3]

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, March 3, at 2:30 PM EST. Each driver would have one lap to set a time. During the first round, the top 20 drivers in the round would be 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, March 4, at 2:00 PM EST. As with the first round, each driver would have one lap to set a time. For this specific race, positions 21-40 would be decided on time,^[7] 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; up to two were given.

Bill Elliott, driving for Melling Racing, would win the pole, setting a time of 24.972 and an average speed of 146.612 miles per hour (235.949 km/h) in the first round.^[8][9]

Four drivers would fail to qualify.