Most car races, or any type of race, for that matter, starts at point A and ends at point B, and the winner is whoever gets there the fastest. There is a second type of car race, in which a set time is allotted and the winner is the driver who covers the most distance. That's the method for the annual 24 Hours of Daytona endurance race, held this past weekend at Daytona International Speedway. With all these cars rounding the 3.56-mile course over and over for 24 hours, you can imagine how hard it is to keep track of them all, and how many people are required to monitor and determine the progress of each car, and keep an eye on the clock.
But the race ended early, due to an error. Ironically, this happened in the year the race was sponsored by Rolex watches! The white flag came down, indicating the last lap, with three whole minutes to go, and the checkered flag waved at 23 hours, 58 minutes, and 24 seconds. The lead driver, Felipe Nasr, checked his Rolex and did another entire lap anyway just in case he was seeing things, or the error might be caught and corrected. That's a no-go, as the race is over when the checked flag is waved.
Read how all this happened, and what confusion it caused, at The Autopian. As the 24 Hours of Daytona is considered the beginning of the racing season, this may not bode well for the rest of the year.