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In
a race in Iowa Monday, Eldora Speedway owner and three
time NASCAR
champion, Tony Stewart, suffered a broken leg in a crash
during a sprint car race.
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Stewart suffers broken leg in sprint car
race
By nwcn.com/sports
OSKALOOSA, Iowa -- Three-time NASCAR champion Tony Stewart has broken
his right leg and had surgery following a crash in a sprint car race at
Southern Iowa Speedway Monday night.
A spokesman for Stewart said the 42-year-old driver broke his right
tibia and fibula.
A scheduled test for the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing NASCAR team at
Atlanta Motor Speedway on Tuesday was canceled. No replacement driver
for this weekend's race at Watkins Glen was immediately announced.
The accident came a day after Stewart finished ninth in the NASCAR race
at Pocono Raceway. He's 11th in the Sprint Cup standings with five
races to go until the Chase for the championship field is set.
Stewart was leading the 30-lap feature in a 360 winged sprint car with
five laps to go when a lapped car spun in Turn 4 and collected Stewart
and two others.
Race winner Brian Brown told the Des Moines Register he saw the
accident in front of him, turned left, hit an infield tire and kept
going.
"It looked like he got into a lapped car," Brown told The Register.
"When I got close, he was flipping cage down. I didn't really have time
to watch and see what was going on.
"First and foremost, we're concerned about Tony and making sure he's
all right. He's a huge asset to our sport, especially sprint car racing
and an icon in the whole motorsports field. Anytime you see him wreck
like that and then leave in an ambulance, it's never good. Hopefully
he's OK. We weren't going to win that race. We were probably going to
run third or fourth."
NASCAR Nationwide Series regular Kyle Larson finished second, telling
The Register he ducked through the infield to miss the wreck.
It's the third time Stewart has wrecked in the last month while
competing in extracurricular races.
Stewart took responsibility for triggering a roughly 10-car accident at
Canandaigua (N.Y.) Motorsports Park on July 16 in which 19-year-old
Alysha Ruggles suffered a broken vertebra in her back.
Last Monday, in a sprint car race at Ohsweken Speedway in Ontario,
Stewart rolled his car five times but walked away. He stayed at the
track to compete in the World of Outlaws race the next night and
bristled at the NASCAR event at Pocono Raceway last weekend when asked
about his harrowing incident in Canada.
"You mortals have got to learn, you guys need to watch more sprint car
videos and stuff," he said Friday at Pocono. "It was not a big deal.
It's starting to get annoying this week about that. That was just an
average sprint car wreck. When they wreck, they get upside down like
that."
Stewart gave an impassioned defense of sprint car racing in June
following the death of good friend Jason Leffler, who was killed in an
accident at Bridgeport Speedway in Swedesboro, N.J.
"I'd be grateful if you guys would understand that what happened this
week wasn't because somebody didn't do something right with the race
track. It was an accident. Just like if you go out and there's a car
crash. It's an accident," Stewart said days after Leffler's death.
"Nobody as a track owner wants to go through what happened, but it's
not due to a lack of effort on their part to try to make their
facilities as safe as possible under the conditions they have."
On Sunday, veteran sprint car driver Kramer Williamson died from
injuries suffered during a qualifying race at Lincoln Speedway in
central Pennsylvania. Williamson, 63, of Palmyra, was pronounced dead
at York Hospital from serious injuries suffered in a crash that
occurred Saturday night during the United Racing Company 358/360 Sprint
Car Challenge.
For the rest of this article and more, click here
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