The 1991 Tyson Holly Farms 400 was the 25th stock car race of the 1991 NASCAR Winston Cup Series and the 42nd iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, September 29, 1991, before an audience of 43,500 in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina at the North Wilkesboro Speedway, a 0.625miles oval short track. The race took the scheduled 400 laps to complete. In the final laps of the race, taking advantage of a brake failure of the dominant driver of the day, Leo Jackson Motorsports driver Harry Gant, Richard Childress Racing driver Dale Earnhardt would mount a late-race charge to the lead, passing Gant with nine laps to go in the race to take the victory, breaking Gant's streak of four consecutive victories.[1] [2] [3] The victory was Earnhardt's 52nd career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory and his fourth and final victory of the season. To fill out the top three, the aforementioned Harry Gant and Bud Moore Engineering driver Morgan Shepherd would finish second and third, respectively.
North Wilkesboro Speedway is a short oval racetrack located on U.S. Route 421, about five miles east of the town of North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, or 80 miles north of Charlotte. It measures 0.625miles and features a unique uphill backstretch and downhill frontstretch. It has previously held races in NASCAR's top three series, including 93 Winston Cup Series races. The track, a NASCAR original, operated from 1949, NASCAR's inception, until the track's original closure in 1996. The speedway briefly reopened in 2010 and hosted several stock car series races before closing again in the spring of 2011. It was re-opened in August 2022 for grassroots racing.
Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Friday, September 27, at 3:00 PM EST. Each driver would have one lap to set a time. During the first round, the top 15 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, September 28, at 12:00 PM EST. As with the first round, each driver would have one lap to set a time. For this specific race, positions 16-30 would be decided on time,[4] 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. If needed, a past champion who did not qualify on either time or provisionals could use a champion's provisional, adding one more spot to the field.
Harry Gant, driving for Leo Jackson Motorsports, would win the pole, setting a time of 19.252 and an average speed of 116.871mph in the first round.[5] [6]
No drivers would fail to qualify.
| Pos | Driver | Points | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dale Earnhardt | 3,750 | |||||||
| 2 | Ricky Rudd | 3,638 (-112) | |||||||
| 3 | Ernie Irvan | 3,452 (-298) | |||||||
| 4 | Davey Allison | 3,431 (–319) | |||||||
| 1 | 5 | Harry Gant | 3,386 (–364) | ||||||
| 1 | 6 | Mark Martin | 3,380 (–370) | ||||||
| 7 | Ken Schrader | 3,317 (–433) | |||||||
| 8 | Sterling Marlin | 3,226 (–524) | |||||||
| 9 | Darrell Waltrip | 3,192 (–558) | |||||||
| 10 | Rusty Wallace | 3,154 (–596) | |||||||
| Official driver's standings | |||||||||