1998 NASCAR Winston Cup Series (Start Your Engines!)

The 1998 NASCAR Winston Cup Series was the 50th season of professional stock car racing in the United States and the 27th modern-era Cup series season.

Technical Changes
For the second year of the SAFER Car, all manufacturers made numerous changes. Most were minor body adjustments, with the biggest changes being to car models.


 * Ford had discontinued the Thunderbird in 1997, and thus needed a new model. Ultimately, they went with the Ford Taurus (which was built on the same platform as the Mercury Sable) and the Lincoln Mark VIII (which shared underpinnings with the Thunderbird and Mercury Cougar), marking the first time Lincoln had run in NASCAR since the 1950s
 * Oldsmobile gained a fourth full-time team in their camp, LJ Racing, another team whom General Motors had reportedly duped into signing with the flagging company to free up resources for their top-tier Chevy and Pontiac teams

1998 had the most manufacturers in NASCAR at seven since the mid-1970s. As it stood, General Motors now had three marquees (Chevrolet, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile), as did Ford Motor Company (Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln), while Chrysler wisely focused their efforts on a single marquee (Dodge). At the 1998 Daytona 500, Ned Jarrett famously referred to this situation as "Manufacturer Critical Mass". After 1998, though, the number of manufacturers rapidly declined, with Oldsmobile pulling out after 1998, Mercury and Lincoln after 2002, and Pontiac after 2003 (though Pontiac would return in 2015). Another "Manufacturer Critical Mass" situation wouldn't occur again until Nissan joined Chevy, Ford, Dodge, Toyota, Pontiac, and Honda in 2021.