Endless

 Well, that was a Daytona 500 for the books.

"Daytona 500" being short for "Daytona 500 Hours."

Like the playwright, you could have called it a long day's journey into night, except it was actually a long day's journey into night and then into another day. It started mid-afternoon on Sunday, didn't end until after midnight on Monday -- and naturally it had an appropriately stupid ending, with Penske teammates Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski wrecking each other on the last lap and taking a whole pile of others with them.

That handed the victory to a guy most people called "Michael McWho?", on account of not many folks knew him by his real name, Michael McDowell.

But McWho flat-throttled it through the last-lap junkyard like the veteran he is to win it under yellow. It was the weirdest finish to a Daytona 500 since Derrike Cope lucked into the only win of his career 31 years ago; even weirder, Cope was in the field Sunday, taking one last auld-lang-syne bow at the age of 62.

 Alas, the bow was a brief one. Cope's day ended on the second lap when a tire went down and he spanked the wall.

Of course, by the time McDowell did his deal, Cope was probably eligible for Medicare. So he had that going for him.

That's because this was the Daytona 500, which meant NASCAR wasn't going to give up without a fight. And so after some more stupid stuff -- an unconscionably early Big One that took out 16 cars just 15 laps into the race -- NASCAR waited out an ensuing clutch of thunderstorms for almost six hours before finally resuming the race sometime around 9 p.m.

Thus the Daytona 500 actually became the Daytona 37.5, followed by the Daytona 462.5.

That the rain delay lasted so long meant some viewers (aka, "me") forgot they hadn't just scrubbed the mission, which they should have and probably would have done if NASCAR folks weren't such an uncommonly bullheaded lot. But they waited and waited and waited, and three hours became four and then five, and eventually one driver (Ross Chastain) left the track and zipped through a McDonald's drive-thru, because why not?

The six-hour intermission meant some viewers (again, "me") never saw a second big wreck on lap 38. Or saw Bubba Wallace make history by becoming the first black driver ever to lead a lap at Daytona, driving  the 23 car for a team co-owned by Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin. Or saw Logano and Keselowski trigger the Final Big One, and McDowell step through the door those two dopes left ajar. 

It was his first Cup victory in 358 starts, and he was wheeling a ride for tiny Front Row Motorsports, so hooray for the little guy.  And it wasn't as if this little guy hadn't persevered; McDowell came to Daytona with 14 Cup seasons under his belt, and he had just four top-five finishes and 13 top tens to show for it.

"It's been a tough road for me," he acknowledged early Monday morning. "I've had to spend a lot of years grinding it out."

Plus one really, really long day.

OK. So one day and part of another, then.