Photo Credit: Noel Lanier
Another day, and more news has come out surrounding Tony Stewart’s incident in the sand-dunes.
As announced by Stewart-Haas Racing on Thursday, the three-time Sprint Cup Series Champion will miss the season-opening Daytona 500, as well as possible other events as a result of a burst fracture to the L1 vertebra in his back. Stewart sustained the injury as a result of an accident while driving a dune buggy in the desert just east of San Diego.
SHR stated in the statement that following the incident on Sunday, Stewart was transported to local hospital and promptly evaluated. Through the whole process, he was able awake and alert, and able to move all extremities. The statement goes on to read that, “Stewart flew to North Carolina Tuesday evening and was admitted to a Charlotte-area Hospital for further evaluations”. Surgery was then performed on Wednesday. He is expected to make a full recovery and return to the seat of the No. 14 Chevrolet at SHR, but no timetable has been determined as of yet. The team has yet to finalize details surrounding an interim driver.
The incident occurred in San Diego as a result of a group of friends going out to the sand dunes together after attending the Barrett Jackson Collector’s Car Auction. The group included Stewart, Biffle, Jeff Gordon, Ray Evernham, Rusty Wallace, notable car collector Ron Prat and legendary drag racer Don “Snake” Prudhomme.
More details have come out surrounding the incident, as Prudhomme detailed the events for NBC Sports.
“We were riding these sand rails. We do that quite a bit. We were all together. What really happened is, it isn’t hard to get split off from one another. In other words, if a guy makes a left turn and you’re not watching his flags or there’s dust or something, you can make a right turn and kind of get lost,” he explained. “So, we got mixed up and (Stewart) was probably missing for an hour-and-a-half from the pack, at least. He was missing, he was not there. We figured maybe he got hooked up with one of the other guys. Then we were stopped and kinda gathered up and started to shoot the s— and asked, ‘Where’s Tony?’”
Prudhomme then goes on to say that someone else from the dunes caught up with them, stating that one of their buddies was hurt on the other side of the hill. Following that reveal, Prudhome and three of them went over to see, in which they came upon Stewart laying there in the sand. Upon arriving, Prudhomme said they asked him whether how he was, and he said his back hurt. They then made sure that he could move his legs, with Evernham taking charge of the situation.
“Ray Evernham is a real good guy, a real responsible guy,” Prudhomme said. “He’s been around situations like this before. Basically we got (Tony) into Ron’s cart and Ron drove him real slowly out of there. (Tony) was holding himself up, as if his ass was real sore. Ron has a place in the area, so he had his helicopter fly over and land on this pavement because he couldn’t land on the sand. Tony had his arm around my shoulder and had another arm around Ray’s shoulder and Gordon was holding him up by the belt. He was walking real slow and we got him into the helicopter and laid him in the back seat.
“Ray got in the helicopter to go to the hospital. The pilot said he was going to Palm Springs Hospital and got on the radio. Ray was the best guy for the job, so he went with Tony and looked over Tony until midnight.”
While some media reports have talked about the possibility of Stewart flipping, Prudhomme says that is no the case as he apparently caught air off of a jump and landed hard.
“What happens in the dunes, there was kind of a big mound and he flew over it and came down hard on the shocks,” Prudhomme said. “In other words, it bottomed itself out. What happened then, it drove the seat up into his ass, basically. It was like, BAM! He hit really hard, but we were running pretty fast.”
Some reports even stated that it was a result of reckless driving, but Prudhomme stated that wasn’t the case, either.
“(Stewart) wasn’t driving reckless or crazy or anything else,” Prudhomme said. “He just happened to hit this (sand) ramp and the way it came down, and it was a lot taller or higher up than he probably realized. And it came down and crashed. We went back to get the car he was driving after he got into the helicopter and just fired that baby up and drove it back to the ranch. “It wasn’t like it flipped over. I’ve heard people say it flipped over. No, it didn’t flip over, it just came down so hard that it messed his back up.”
The original article on NBC goes into detail time that Prudhomme spent with Stewart in the hospital prior to the surgery, which can be read by clicking here.
