August 15, 2010
By Kim Roberson
Kim Roberson
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I have never doubted that Jack Roush is a dedicated NASCAR team owner.
I have never been to a race where I have not crossed paths with him at some point during the weekend.
Two weeks ago, Jack crashed his Beechcraft Premiere Business Jet while coming in to land at the annual Oshkosh Air Show. According to Roush, he told the National transportation Safety Board (NTSB) “The reality of it -- on a trip arrival into Oshkosh, Wis., I 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, and I have a compression fracture in my back. I have some damage in my left eye and I've got damage to my left cheek. I'll recover everything but the sight in my left eye."
Roush walked away from the crash, quite bloodied, and spent the last two weeks undergoing multiple surgeries and recovering at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Despite the injuries and the second brush with death in a plane (the first happening eight years ago when he crashed into a lake while flying a twin-engine Aircam experimental aircraft for his 60th birthday), Roush was back at the track in Michigan on Friday, stopwatch in hand, watching as his four teams qualified for today’s Carfax 400.
I can’t imagine having the injuries Roush has and still standing on pit road almost as if nothing ever happened. However, drivers from several teams said they weren’t all that shocked to see the team owner on hand as soon as he was released from the hospital.
“It just shows his determination as a human being, as a racer and what racing means to him,” said driver of the Richard Childress Racing No. 33, Clint Bowyer, after seeing Roush at the track. “I mean, you’re getting ready to roll out there in qualifying and see a guy that determined to be back at the racetrack after such a horrifying accident. That just meant a lot. It was a pretty cool moment to go down there and shake his hand and say, ‘Welcome back.’”
Bowyer wasn’t the only driver to walk up and shake Roush’s hand and welcome him back. As drivers walked past the team owner on pit road preparing for qualifying, several walked over and shook the owners hand or said hello.
“I would like to thank everyone for the outpouring of support and concern I have received the past two weeks,” Roush said about the support he has received from fellow team owners, drivers, and fans alike. “Our teams and drivers have not missed a beat in my absence, and I am proud of the effort they have put forth.”
Roush understands that despite the fact he has been nicknamed the “Cat in the hat”, he doesn’t have nine lives to pull from. But, he also realizes that what he has built is meant to last a long time past when he is actually at the helm.
“I feel very lucky. I’ve had several bites at the apple here,” he commented Friday. “Roush Fenway Racing will out-live me, and it will out-live anybody else that is with the company today. We’ve got the plans in place for that.
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Plane broke up on hard landing
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"This was a little test case. How can you do without Jack? Well it’s bigger than me. It’s bigger than anybody. The organization has been very strong and we’re peaking at the right time of our year. We’re approaching the Chase here, with, I think there’s four races, including this one left, and so if we don’t have a mechanical error and miss a wreck, we have a good chance to put three cars in the Chase.
"With the way the cars are running right now, I think that we’re in a position to be better for the end of the year than we have been all year. My point was the momentum for that, the things that were in place, were not impacted by the fact that I had a problem. It happened that I wasn’t on my way to a race track. It wasn’t something silly I was doing erratically or something else that you would say was risky or foolish. It just happened.
“I survived two car wrecks too, both of them in racing. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to have been able to survive and I feel in some ways unworthy. I’m not sure I’ve done enough yet for the chances that I’ve had. Maybe that’s recognized and they’re just giving me more time.”
Roush says he still has a long way to go in the healing process, and he won’t ever be able to regain sight in his left eye. But that doesn’t mean he intends to slow down, or even stop flying.
“I’ve got to get recovered. I have to go through my recovery. Wiley Post was a one-eyed pilot and there’s no restriction. Maybe if you’re an airline pilot you can’t have one eye, but there’s not a reason why I can’t fly with one eye.”
As for the picture we often see of Roush checking the ends of plugs at the end of each practice or qualifying, a task that has always been uniquely his at the race track for all four of his teams, the Cat says the loss of vision in the left eye won’t cause a problem at all. “Well, I won’t be able to read power plugs in my left eye, but I always use my right eye for that because that’s the dominant eye.”
Leave it to Jack to pick himself up, dust himself off, and throw himself right back into the fray as soon as the doctors let him.
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