The 1988 Coca-Cola 600 was the tenth stock car race of the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup Series season and the 29th iteration of the event. The race was held on Sunday, May 29, 1988, before an audience of 165,000 in Concord, North Carolina, at Charlotte Motor Speedway, a 1.5 miles (2.4 km) permanent quad-oval. The race took the scheduled 400 laps to complete. On the final restart with nine laps left in the race, Hendrick Motorsports driver Darrell Waltrip would manage to fend off the field to take his 72nd 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 owner-driver Alan Kulwicki would finish second and third, respectively.

The race was marred by a series of tire failures that had lasted throughout the entire race. With almost every starter for the race deciding to run tires made by Hoosier Racing Tire (with Dave Marcis being the only exception, deciding to instead run tires made by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company), numerous drivers suffered tire blowouts. Notable drivers who suffered tire blowouts include Harry Gant, Neil Bonnett, and Rick Wilson, all of whom had to be hospitalized after their accidents. Marcis did not suffer any tire failures, but still failed to finish after Sterling Marlin also suffered a tire failure and collected Marcis in the process.^[5] The increased amount of tire blowouts was blamed on an increase of both track temperature and higher speeds than Hoosier had expected, according to the company's CEO, Bob Newton.^[6]

Charlotte Motor Speedway is a motorsports complex located in Concord, North Carolina, United States 13 miles from Charlotte, North Carolina. The complex features a 1.5 miles (2.4 km) quad oval track that hosts NASCAR racing including the prestigious Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend and the NEXTEL All-Star Challenge, as well as the UAW-GM Quality 500. The speedway was built in 1959 by Bruton Smith and is considered the home track for NASCAR with many race teams located in the Charlotte area. The track is owned and operated by Speedway Motorsports Inc. (SMI) with Marcus G. Smith (son of Bruton Smith) as track president.

Qualifying was split into two rounds. The first round was held on Wednesday, May 27, at 3:00 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 Thursday, May 28, 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,^[8] 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.

Davey Allison, driving for Ranier-Lundy Racing, would win the pole, setting a time of 31.107 and an average speed of 173.594 miles per hour (279.372 km/h) in the first round.^[9][10]

11 drivers would fail to qualify.