The 1988 Champion Spark Plug 400 was the 19th stock car race of the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 19th iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, August 21, 1988, before an audience of 72,000 in Brooklyn, Michigan, at Michigan International Speedway, a two-mile (3.2 km) moderate-banked D-shaped speedway. The race took the scheduled 200 laps to complete. Taking advantage of a misfortunate Bill Elliott, Ranier-Lundy Racing driver Davey Allison would manage to lead the final 23 laps of the race to take his third career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his first victory of the season.^[1][2][3][4] To fill out the top three, Blue Max Racing driver Rusty Wallace and Melling Racing driver Bill Elliott would finish second and third, respectively.

The race was held at Michigan International Speedway, a two-mile (3.2 km) moderate-banked D-shaped speedway located in Brooklyn, Michigan. The track is used primarily for NASCAR events. It is known as a "sister track" to Texas World Speedway as MIS's oval design was a direct basis of TWS, with moderate modifications to the banking in the corners, and was used as the basis of Auto Club Speedway. The track is owned by International Speedway Corporation. Michigan International Speedway is recognized as one of motorsports' premier facilities because of its wide racing surface and high banking (by open-wheel standards; the 18-degree banking is modest by stock car standards).

• (R) denotes rookie driver.

Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Saturday, August 20, at 11:30 AM 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 Saturday, August 20, 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,^[5] 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 41.157 and an average speed of 174.940 miles per hour (281.539 km/h) in the first round.^[6]

Nine drivers would fail to qualify.

Drivers' Championship standings Pos Driver Points 1 Rusty Wallace 2,873 2 Bill Elliott 2,852 (-21) 3 Dale Earnhardt 2,716 (-157) 4 Ken Schrader 2,602 (–271) 5 Terry Labonte 2,552 (–321) 6 Geoff Bodine 2,470 (–403) 1 7 Sterling Marlin 2,417 (–456) 1 8 Phil Parsons 2,405 (–468) 9 Darrell Waltrip 2,353 (–520) 10 Bobby Hillin Jr. 2,235 (–638) Official driver's standings Note: Only the first 10 positions are included for the driver standings.