Self-Driving Cars Come in 40-Way Tie at 2036 Daytona 500

Future Fake News - February 17, 2036

DAYTONA BEACH, FL — For the fifth year in a row, there has been a 40-way tie to win the Daytona 500 NASCAR Cup Series motor race. All self-driving stock cars in the field finished with the exact same time, tying the historical course record set six years ago by George Hotz.

Hotz won the 2031 Daytona 500 with the aid of his comma.ai openpilot fully autonomous driving system. comma.ai uses artificial intelligence and deep reinforcement learning to simulate billions of races at the Daytona International Speedway to calculate the “groove” or optimal route around the track. Using an array of cameras and sensors to avoid other cars, the openpilot system optimizes the precise speeds and angles for every turn on the 200 laps around the 2.5-mile superspeedway. It is physically impossible to complete the 500-mile race any faster. Hotz set the course record that year, his first time ever racing, then retired from NASCAR.

Since then every other stock car racing team has replaced their human drivers with autopilots and copied comma.ai’s open source algorithms. Per NASCAR rules, human drivers are still required to sit in the car with their hands on the wheel, but they don’t actually steer and let openpilot do the work. There hasn’t been a single accident in a NASCAR race since the introduction of autopilot systems. However, with fan attendance and television ratings continually in decline, NASCAR is considering a ban on all AI driver-assistance software in next year’s race.