Bodine again drove the full Busch series schedule in the No. 00 Oldsmobile in 1987.  Although he failed to find victory lane, he accumulated 5 poles, 8 top fives, 17 top tens, and finished 3rd in the championship.  In May for the 7th Cup Series race of the season at North Wilksboro Bodine was chosen to replace the injured Terry Labonte on the pace lap in Junior Johnson's #11 Budweiser Chevy. Despite starting from the rear of the field after the driver change, he managed to finish in 8th place. Brett also replaced Labonte on the pace laps the next week at Bristol. Again starting from the rear of the field, Brett ran as high as 2nd and finished in 9th place. While Terry Labonte is credited with the finishes due to the NASCAR rules regarding driver changes at the time, Bodine's success as a fill-in driver lead to a ride for 14 Cup races in Hoss Ellington's part time No. 1 Bulls-Eye Barbecue Sauce Chevy.  In Brett's first event with the Ellington team he qualified on pole for the Winston Open and placed 6th. He returned to Charlotte the next weekend and qualified 9th for the 600 and lead 17 laps (the first cup laps lead of his career) but was collected in a wreck while running in the top 10 and eventually fell out of the race with an engine issue. At Daytona Brett qualified 7th, lead a lap, and finished a season-best 11th, the first lead lap finish of his cup career. For the season he had 5 top 10 qualifying efforts in the #1 car and 5 top 20 finishes.