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Filed under: Jimmie Johnson, Kasey Kahne, Mark Martin, Sprint Cup, NASCAR

Jack Roush said that the congestion at Whitman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wis., site of the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual AirVenture weekend, played a role in his July 27 crash there while he was landing his Premier Beechcraft jet, Mark Martin told the media Friday.

"I talked to Jack Sunday evening, and he's doing okay," Martin said during his press conference at Michigan International Speedway. "He, obviously, wanted to tell me the story about how the accident happened, and it was pretty much what I suspected immediately when I heard where and when it had happened. There was a conflict with traffic.

"Jack got in a situation where he thought, 'How am I going to get out of this without hitting somebody?' because of all the things that were going on, which is exactly what I thought would happen, because, you know, he's in a jet and there's some very small aircraft at different speeds and those kinds of things," Martin said. "And he just got in a situation where he was uncertain about how he was going to make it all work, got slow and tried to get slowed down and got a little too slow and whatever."

At Oshkosh during the AirVenture weekend, "they've got aircraft that are landing just nose to tail, and they might be landing on other runways, on taxiway. . . all this stuff simultaneously. It's not something you deal with under normal circumstances. Under normal circumstances, they're way spread apart and all of that stuff."

Roush was able to walk out of his badly damaged jet after the crash, but lost his left eye and suffered other severe facial injuries. He was hospitalized until Wednesday, but returned to the track Friday wearing sunglasses, which covered his stitched left eye.

Roush said Friday that he filed his accident report for the latest incident on Friday and according to ESPN, said he was put in conflict with the flight plan of another airplane close to the ground "and I was unable to address the conflict and keep the airplane flying."

"I ground-looped the airplane," ESPN quoted Roush as saying. "It wasn't something silly I was doing erratically or something else that you would say was risky or foolish. It just happened."

 

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Filed under: Roush Fenway Racing, NASCAR

Jack Roush, co-owner of the Roush Fenway Racing team in NASCAR, was transferred to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., on Wednesday evening, the Roush Fenway website reported Thursday. Roush was transferred after undergoing surgery Tuesday night for the facial injuries he suffered after crashing his jet while attempting to land at an Oshkosh, Wis., airport.

Roush, who walked out of the crumpled jet after the crash, remains in serious but stable condition, the site said.

The NASCAR owner was attempting to land his Premier Beechcraft jet at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh. An aviation buff, Roush was flying in to attend the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wis., this week.

Roush's only passenger, Brenda Strickland of Plymouth, Mich., also walked out of the plane after the crash and was hospitalized overnight. She was released Wednesday.

Before being transferred to the famous Minnesota clinic for further treatment of his facial injuries, Roush underwent facial surgery Tuesday night at Theda Clark Medical Center in Neenah, Wisc., the site reported.

The nature of Roush's facial injuries has not yet been publicly detailed, but he was bleeding heavily around the nose and lower face when he emerged from his crashed plane after the accident -- the second plane crash Roush has survived.

Roush's jet was close to the runway when the right wing dipped, the nose veered and the plane belly flopped onto the ground. It cartwheeled nose to tail horizontally before coming to a stop on its belly, with the fuselage split.

 

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