DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The white flag is out. The chief of the race has the hammer down however each eyes are glued to the rearview mirror. What he sees is a pack of offended, onrushing race vehicles that need to be the place he’s. Then out of the blue, that chief is now not the chief. The pack is now not a pack. It’s a scrapyard. In the meantime, somebody who wasn’t the chief is now the chief and never solely that, they’re additionally the most recent champion of the largest inventory automotive race on this planet.

Shortly after midnight on Monday, that’s exactly how it went down at the Daytona 500. That is how Michael McDowell wound up driving his underfunded, likeable loser, Pittsburgh Pirates of a Entrance Row Motorsports Ford into NASCAR’s most-hallowed Victory Lane. Not Joey Logano, the chief with half a lap remaining, solely a mile from his second Daytona 500 victory. Not Brad Keselowski, the second place working former sequence champion whose solely lacking jewel is a win within the sport’s most prestigious occasion.

Nope. They each ended up within the fence, together with six different machines that had been sliding, colliding, some exploding into flames whereas others flung mud and sod into the air. McDowell drag raced defending Cup champ Chase Elliott and 2018 Daytona 500 winner Austin Dillon to the end earlier than the warning flag froze the sphere and ended the race.

Keselowski stated: “I do not really feel like I made a mistake, however I am unable to drive all people else’s automotive. So irritating.”

Logano stated: “Pandemonium, I assume. Chaos struck.”

McDowell stated: “I do know lots of people are mad. I do know lots of people are asking, ‘Who the heck is Michael McDowell and the way is he sporting this Daytona 500 ring?’ Joey went a technique, Brad went the opposite, and it was like watching a door open.”

When advised that folks (extra particularly, web individuals) had been questioning how that door opened — as in, he’d used his entrance bumper to open it — the racer who’d simply ended a profession 0-for-357 winless streak smiled, shrugged and chuckled.

“That is the Daytona 500, man,” McDowell stated. “For those who had been shocked or stunned at how that simply occurred, then you have not been watching this race, actually not in recent times.”

The racer they name McDriver is McCorrect. Final-lap crashes and lead modifications was once the Daytona 500 exception. There is a cause we grew up with fixed replays of Richard Petty and David Pearson within the frontstretch grass in 1976 and “There is a combat!” between Cale Yarborough and the Alabama Gang in 1979. They had been very actually extraordinary moments. Again within the day, that type of last-lap, no-idea-who’ll-win stuff by no means occurred.

Now it occurs yearly. Chaos and pandemonium are the modus operandi. The Nice American Race has turn into the Joie Chitwood Thrill Present.

To paraphrase the good thinker Richard Aptitude, you may adore it or you may hate it, however you’d higher sit down and have a look at it, as a result of that is what the Daytona 500 is right this moment.

Over the primary 57 editions of the five hundred, there was a lead change on the ultimate lap 9 occasions. Now it is occurred 4 occasions in six years. And that is solely the official lap chief stat, scored on the start-finish line. It does not depend an change akin to one 12 months in the past, when Ryan Newman took the lead in the course of the white flag lap and held down the purpose all the way in which into the tri-oval earlier than getting was the wall his now-famous crash as winner Denny Hamlin streaked by.

Earlier than 2017, nobody had ever received the Daytona 500 by main solely the ultimate lap of the race. Michael McDowell was the third driver to do it within the final 5 years.

So, what precisely does all this imply? Ought to we really feel manipulated as a result of these finishes is likely to be the product of a system more and more rigged to create parity? Ought to we be wrestling with our motorsports morality as a result of right this moment’s Nice American Race is a lot completely different than those received by the Best Technology? Have we offered our inventory automotive souls within the title of better-than-CGI imagery of crashes and flames and banzai transfer finish-line heroics straight out of Mario Kart?

Is Basic Maximus about to throw his fingers into the air and expose our lust for extra by exclaiming, “Are you not entertained?!”

“I do not find out about all that,” Michael McDowell stated in an empty Victory Lane early Monday morning, watching and rewatching the video of his transfer into the lead. It was the primary time he’d seen it and his eyes grew giant because the crash unfolded and the reporter’s smartphone display screen grew to become orange with the photographs of flames.

“As a sports activities fan, all you may ask for isn’t understanding what’s coming subsequent, proper? The massive end on the finish,” he continued. “You by no means know what’s coming subsequent on this race. Definitely not as of late. So, it is fairly entertaining and enjoyable, I’d assume.”

McDowell paused, turned and pointed to the large Harley J. Earl Trophy behind him. Monitor staff had been already bolting on a silver plate freshly-engraved together with his title, alongside the likes of Petty, Pearson, Earnhardt, and so much former Daytona 500 winners whom he’d simply outrun, together with would-be winner Logano, who had come by moments earlier to congratulate McDowell in particular person.

“Entertaining and enjoyable. I assume that is simple for me to say, is not it?”