Tony Stewart Breaks Leg In Small Car Race

From ESPN: 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 on 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 Cup 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.
It's the third time Stewart has wrecked in the past month in extracurricular races.
He took responsibility for triggering a multicar accident at Canandaigua (N.Y.) Motorsports Park on July 16.
Last Monday in Canada, Stewart walked away after rolling his car five times in a sprint car race at Ohsweken Speedway in Ontario.  http://espn.go.com/racing/nascar/cup/story/_/id/9542562/nascar-driver-tony-stewart-hospitalized-wreck
Stewart has been pushing the envelope lately and now, his luck ran out.
He had a real good chance at making the Chase, but now, he has a real good chance of not making it, unless he gets the help of a replacement driver.
The next race is at Watkins Glen, a road course, in which he needs to do a lot of braking and shifting of gears, besides using the accelerator an awful lot.  That's not good if you have a broken right leg, especially if he has to have surgery.
Update from the Des Moines Register: Stewart left the Southern Iowa Speedway in an ambulance after being involved in a four-car wreck that sent his sprint car tumbling.
Stewart was leading the 30-lap feature of the Front Row Challenge with five laps remaining when Josh Higday’s car spun on Turn 4 and collected the top three cars – Stewart, Tasker Phillips and Tony Shilling.
Track officials said Stewart was conscious and talking to responders after being placed on a stretcher.
Brian Brown raced to victory, holding off Kyle Larson after the restart.
“First and foremost, we’re concerned about Tony and making sure he’s all right,” Brown said. “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."
Brown added: “When I saw the wreck, I turned left and hit an infield tire and kept going. It was just luck.”
Asked what he saw of Stewart's situation, Brown said: “It looked like he got into a lapped car. When I got close, he was flipping cage down. I didn’t really have time to watch and see what was going on.”
Many fans probably wonder: Why does a big star like Stewart risk everything at small tracks such as Oskaloosa's?
“That’s the risk I know he’s willing to take because he enjoys sprint car racing and a lot of people don’t understand why he would do such a thing, but I do,” Bruce said. “Almost every single person in this pit area loves sprint car racing and will literally mortgage their house and everything they’ve got to go do it. I know right now it’s kind of getting a bad rap, because people are dying and getting injured really bad. But at the same time, we all know that’s the risk. Heck, you could die in a street car probably easier than you could die in a race car. It’s one of those things that unfortunately happens. Hopefully he’ll be OK and I’m sure we’ll see him in a race car again.”
What causes the addiction?
“First the adrenaline rush and then the competition,” Bruce said. “If you’re competitive at anything, you always want to be the best. When you get out of the car at the end of the day and you beat everybody, you feel like you’re somebody. There’s really no explanation for what it is, it’s just there and you can’t get rid of it.”   http://www.desmoinesregister.com/viewart/20130805/SPORTS1401/130806003/Tony-Stewart-breaks-leg-in-wreck-at-Oskaloosa-track?Frontpage
ESPN has reported that Stewart will miss the race at Watkins Glen on Sunday.