The 1987 Daytona 500 was the first stock car race of the 1987 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 29th iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, February 15, 1987, before an audience of 130,000 in Daytona Beach, Florida at Daytona International Speedway, a 2.5 miles (4.0 km) permanent triangular-shaped superspeedway. The race took the scheduled 200 laps to complete.

Nearing the race's end, two contenders for the race, Hendrick Motorsports' Geoff Bodine and Melling Racing's Bill Elliott, differed on pit strategy for the end of the race. Bodine, who was at the lead at the time, ran out of fuel with three laps left in the race, giving the lead to Elliott. Elliott was then able to fend off Bodine's teammate, Benny Parsons, to take his 18th career NASCAR Winston Cup Series victory, his first victory of the season, and his second and final Daytona 500 victory.^[1][2] To fill out the top three, the aforementioned Benny Parsons and owner-driver Richard Petty finished second and third, respectively.

Daytona International Speedway is one of three superspeedways to hold NASCAR races, the other two being Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway. The standard track at Daytona International Speedway is a four-turn superspeedway that is 2.5 miles (4.0 km) long. The track's turns are banked at 31 degrees, while the front stretch, the location of the finish line, is banked at 18 degrees.

Qualifying was set by the 1987 7-Eleven Twin 125s. The top two positions were set by qualifying speeds held for the Twin 125 Qualifiers held on Monday, February 9, with the top two qualifiers in the session earning the top two positions for the Daytona 500. The rest of the starting was set in the Twin 125 Qualifiers, held on Thursday, February 12, during two races. The top 14 finishers in the first race, excluding the pole position winner, set the inside row from rows two to 15, and the top 14 finishers in the second race, excluding the outside pole position winner, set the outside row from rows two to 15. The remaining non-qualifiers set positions 31-40 based on qualifying speeds from the first qualifying session held on Saturday. If needed, up to two extra provisionals were given to teams high enough in the previous season's owner's standings that did not qualify for the race by either qualifying speed or from the Twin 125 Qualifiers.

Bill Elliott, driving for Melling Racing, managed to win the pole, setting a time of 42.783 and an average speed of 210.364 miles per hour (338.548 km/h) in Monday's session.^[4]

19 drivers failed to qualify.