Daytona 500 should wrap up by Thursday

If you missed last night's this morning's Daytona 500, here's what happened.

Millions of non-NASCAR fans tuned in late night to watch what literally was a continuous pileup of twisted metal and blazing corporate logos.

Half the field crashed, most notably bikini model Danica Patrick on the first lap. She also crashed in qualifying. But she did come back to finish the race ... eight hours later. Maybe NASCAR isn't her thing.

I'm not sure how it happened but at one point the track spontaneously combusted into a fireball and was doused in TIDE for three hours. Apparently Juan Pablo Montoya, who you may remember for his role in The Princess Bride, crashed into a safety truck while under caution (you're doing it all wrong, Juan) and a few hundred tons of jet fuel caught fire. Only at Daytona!

The only thing that didn't break was the Matt Kenseth's Best Buy car, which edged out Dale Earnhardt, Jr's rig by .21 seconds.

Then Kenny Powers wept a single, slow motion tear.

@cuppycup's Twitter feed offers the best real-time breakdown of what went down.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is fixing to make his way up to the mountains, bettin' on forgettin' all the troubles that he knew.

Everything breaks in the #Daytona500 except for the Best Buy product. Bizarro world, folks.

If you were a Mayan and had a vision of this #Daytona500 you would have called it the apocalypse too.

Some proud parent is watching the #Daytona500 right now yelling, "That's my boy rubbing the track and smelling his hand!"

This reminds me of the time I took all of my Matchbox cars into the backyard and smashed them to pieces with rocks.

#1 sign your sport sucks: the delays are the most exciting part.

That wraps up our NASCAR coverage for the year.