1990 NASCAR Winston Cup Series - Atlanta Journal 500

Atlanta Journal 500

The final race of the season was held on November 18, 1990 at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Rusty Wallace won the pole. Tragedy struck during the race, when Ricky Rudd driving the Levi Garrett #5 locked his breaks up lost control of the car on pit road and struck and killed Mike Ritch, a pit crew member on Bill Elliott's team.

Top Ten Results

1. 15-Morgan Shepherd
2. 11-Geoff Bodine
3. 3-Dale Earnhardt
4. 21-Dale Jarrett
5. 17-Darrell Waltrip
6. 6-Mark Martin
7. 4-Ernie Irvan
8. 7-Alan Kulwicki
9. 27-Rusty Wallace
10. 18-Greg Sacks -1

Failed to qualify: 82-Mark Stahl

• The fatal accident on pit road was the trigger for a series of new pit road procedures in the Winston Cup Series. At this time, pit road had no speed limit, which meant that cars would blast down pit road in order to lose the least amount of time. Drivers were essentially waved into their pit stall by a sign board man who would stand out in pit lane holding up their teams' pitboard. Examples of this can be seen in the movie Days of Thunder. In addition, pit road was not closed when the caution was first displayed, which would result in cars rushing into the pits before the pace car picked up the field. This was first curtailed by the banning of tire changes under caution, an extremely unpopular move (all other services were still allowed though). The pit road closing procedures (that continue today in a modified form) also began with this pit procedure. New rules for pit crews that required crews to stay on the other side of the pit wall from the cars until your car was 1 stall away was instituted.
• Pitboard men were no longer allowed to stand out in the middle of the pit lane. To replace that, pitboards were attached to a metal pole and dangled out in the pitstall from the other side of the pit wall. In addition, each car was issued either a blue (with a white number 1 on it) or orange sticker (with a white number 2 on it). The odd numbered cars got the blue stickers while the even numbered cars got the orange stickers. Once the green flag came back out, the blue flag was put out at the end of the 2nd lap after the restart, which allowed only the odd-numbered cars to pit for tires. After the 3rd lap (after the restart), an orange flag was displayed, allowing only even-numbered cars to pit for tires. This procedure only lasted a few races before it was dumped in favor of pit road speed limits.