NASCAR star Tony Stewart is likely to miss the Cheez-It 355 at Watkins Glen road course this Sunday thanks to a broken tibia and fibula suffered at Southern Iowa Speedway.
Stewart, who has crashed three times this month in non-Sprint Cup races, is a five-time winner at Watkins Glen, so his absence will be a big blow to Stewart-Haas racing. Stewart-Haas Racing has not announced a replacement for Stewart, and they are more concerned with Stewart's health. A spokesman for the driver said:
"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."
Brian Brown, who won the race, said he only caught a glimpse of Stewart's wreck. "It looked like he got into a lapped car," Brown said. "When I got close, he was flipping cage down. I didn't really have time to watch and see what was going on."
Stewart recently caused a multi-car crash on July 19th that resulted in broken vertebrae for 19-year-old Alysha Ruggles, then flipped over multiple times in a crash last Monday. Stewart brushed off these accidents, saying, "You mortals have got to learn, you guys need to watch more sprint car videos and stuff. 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."
Sprint racing has come under fire for being too dangerous since the death of Jason Leffler, but Stewart is a staunch defender of the sport. In June after Leffler passed away, Stewart was quoted saying:
"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 racetrack. It was an accident. Just like if you go out and there's a car crash. It's an accident. 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."
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