Update on Jack Roush's Condition; Roush Racing's Kurt Busch Finishes Third at Talladega
Geoff Smith, president of Roush Racing, met with the media at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway on Sunday morning prior to the NASCAR Winston Cup Aaron’s 499 to provide another update on the condition of Jack Roush, who was injured in a plane crash Friday evening.
GEOFF SMITH, President, Roush Racing—“Good morning. First of all, Jack remains in critical condition, although that designation means a variety of things. He’s still in intensive care and that’s partly related to the critical condition designation, as we understand it. Anyway, yesterday, late afternoon, he had progressed sufficiently to encourage the doctors that he could take the anesthetic to be able to do the surgical repairs to the bone damage to his left leg, which was femur, shin and ankle work. He took the anesthetic so well that they were able to complete, on their laundry list of things they wanted to do, in his left leg, they were able to complete that. He rested successfully overnight, had a good night, and signs are good. And yesterday, there are many stories from the family and Roush personnel that were with him. He recognized everybody that was talking to him, and he would respond to questions. He’d acknowledge that he’d understand by squeezing the left hand, squeezing the right hand. He had ways to gesture, to let you know that he wanted more information from you on a topic, so we were all just feeling really good about that. Of course, you understand that he ingested a lot of murky lake water, and so we just have to watch him pretty closely here. They’re going to keep on a respirator for a period of time out of possible concerns. There’s a lot a lot of things going on for possible concerns and worrying. We all need for more time elapse, but I can say that we’re all greatly encouraged by the news of the day. As we did yesterday, as there are upgrades and new things that occur during the day, we’ll post them and we’ll let you know. Are there any questions?”
WHAT TYPE OF SURGERY WAS PERFORMED ON HIS LEG? “He had more than one broken area in the femur with an open break, and so they were able to insert a steel rod in the femur to stabilize that, and then he still has a leg wound there which they’re letting heal from the inside-out, which, I guess is standard practice on account of worrying about infection there. They repaired some damage in the knee. The shin was a basic setting. And they put pins and plates in the ankle, both bones in his ankle had to be plated and pinned.”
IS HE AWARE OF WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM? “Evan Lyall, the president of our parent company, was there, and through gestures Jack was asking what happened. He didn’t know. ‘I’ve got this respirator here,’ didn’t want it. ‘Do you know why you’re here?’ Shook his head no. ‘You’re here because you were at your birthday party. You were in an airplane accident. You were the only one in the plane. You have this leg injuries that are going to have to be repaired.’ But because he’s been heavily sedated since Friday afternoon, it’s unclear to us at what point he’s remembering while he’s on drugs and remembering while he’s not on drugs.”
DID THEY GIVE YOU AN IDEA ABOUT THE HEAD INJURY? “There had been no swelling that was reported to us, which had them greatly encouraged over that period of time, and it progressed so much – let’s put it this way: the fact that they felt comfortable with being able to go forward with the anesthetic, the general anesthetic for the leg, was a very clear signal to us that the concern over the head injury as a life-threatening situation was substantially diminished.”
CAN YOU NARROW THE DEFINITION OF “HEAD INJURY”? “We had the term, it’s DIA, and I can’t remember what those initials are, but he didn’t fracture anything. He hit his head, but they didn’t know how much of the injury might be from hitting his head and how much might be from the fact that he was underwater for a period of time without oxygen. But the fact that he didn’t have brain swelling was a big indicator that the underwater period – they expected if there was serious injury coming from that, it would result in swelling. So that hadn’t occurred. He got rattled pretty good, there’s not much question about that, so until he’s all out of it all, there’s a lot of things we don’t know. But I can tell you some of things I do know, that it’s a lot different critical, the word ‘critical’ means a lot different to me today than it did at midnight Friday night.”
HAS ANYBODY AT ROUSH RACING HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO TALK WITH LARRY HICKS YET? “Yes. Larry Hicks, he’s a guy that prefers you didn’t know his name, but I told him last night that ‘Larry, you’re a hero, man, and there’s no way that I’m going to stop from talking about you.’ For those of you who don’t know, Larry Hicks was a Marine Corps Sgt. Major who retired around 1990, who trained in search-and-air rescue, had assignments in Japan, leading groups that’s job was to rescue pilots, and he told me last night that he never actually had to rescue one. Jack was the first one that he rescued. He’s rehabilitating from chemotherapy. There’s so many things about what happened, that the intersection of fate does cross here because if you’re going to go down in an airplane, you’re in the middle of Alabama, and the first part is if you hit the ground, you wouldn’t have survived, and their happened to be a lake there. Well, you’re going to go in the lake underwater, so that’s a bad thing, too. So what do you got to have? You got to have a 22-year Marine veteran, 50 yards away watching you do this, in a boat, and come immediately, immediately, to you, dive in, and guess what? He knew enough about seeing the plane that he knew kind of where to look in the plane, but didn’t find Jack on the first dive. Didn’t find Jack on the second dive, because what had happened, apparently, that on the impact in this particular type of plane, moved Jack up, literally, up a seat, forward. But on the third time, not only did he find him, but he was able to recognize the kind of harness that Jack was in, a quick-release harness that he had seen in the military and he knew how to uncouple it, with the flick of the wrist uncoupled it and Jack floated up in his arms and up he went. And Larry knew enough, first of all, hauling the body out on the wing, he knew enough to, you know, he had to get the water out of his lungs. How many of us would know? Right? Get the water out, boom, he got the lungs clean. And then he applied the resuscitation, and I think the fifth attempt, and Jack was on his own. He also had the presence to stay there with him, and try not to haul him in his boat or move the bones around, he knew he had to keep him quiet so he kept him there until the emergency unit arrived, and they put him in kind of a water basket to get him there. And in the meantime, Larry had av gas that was around the plane, so he got this av gas on him, and he wasn’t like fire burns, but it gave him a skin rash. We have friends that were there at the scene and Larry wants to say, ‘I got a little sunburned,’ but was he rashed up pretty good. What a miracle that is, to have your guardian angel 50 yards away, right when you got to have him. Because if it weren’t for Larry Hicks, this mood would be much different.”
WILL JACK BE IN THIS HOSPITAL FOR A WHILE? “We’re just going one day at a time. If all these checklists of worrisome things of infection, if they get checked off relatively quickly, then we got a man in a cast who’ll be out here on a golf cart in a short period of time.”
YOU’RE NOT GOING TO LET LARRY HICKS AVOID BEING A HERO ARE YOU? “I told him last night, I said, ‘Larry, just relax and enjoy it. There’s no way.’ He just said, ‘Well, I’m just doing what any of all you would do for me.’ ‘Larry, I wouldn’t had a clue how to get off that dock to go do it.”
DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING SPECIAL PLANNED FOR THIS MAN? “I told him that it was coming, that he was part of our family, whether he likes it or not, and when things quiet down for him and quiet down for us a bit, we’re going to be figuring out something there.”
HAVE YOU MET WITH HIM PERSONNALY? “No, on the phone.”
WAS HE AWARE OF WHO JACK IS? “He didn’t know when he pulled him out of the plane. He didn’t know, people gathered around him. He didn’t know as they both went together to the hospital. He didn’t know when someone told him. But the moment he told his family, it was like, ‘Don’t you know who that is? That’s Jack Roush. He’s got these four Winston Cup teams and lah-de-dah-de-dah. This is a famous guy.’ ‘Oh. Okay.’”
WHAT ABOUT THE INJURY TO JACK’S OTHER LEG? “There was a little confusion yesterday because of the way that we stated that both ankle bones were broken, but it’s both sides of the left ankle, not ankles, both ankles. And there’s minor bumps and bruises, but there’s nothing broken over on the right side.”
FRANK KIMMELL—26—Advance Auto Parts Taurus (finished 35th)—“Broke a right-front shock. They kind of put me three-wide there pretty early and moved me to the back, which I kind of expected. Kind of riding back there with Jimmy Spencer and those guys and just biding our time, and drove off in the turn and the thing started bouncing across the race track, and I knew I broke a shock.”
RYAN NEWMAN—12—ALLTEL Taurus (finished 43rd)—“Something happened in the motor. We just dropped a cylinder and then another one, and that’s when it started smoking a little bit, so I brought it into the pits.”
ELLIOTT SADLER—21—Motorcraft Taurus (finished 40th)—“I didn’t really see anything, I just looked in rear-view mirror and I saw the 33 sideways, I don’t know what happened. And then all of a suden, somebody clipped me in my left-rear and sent me head-on to the wall. It’s about the hardest his I’ve ever taken, so I commend NASCAR again on the safety of these race cars, what they make these teams go through. My HANS device did great. I’m just going to have a little headache in the morning. Just tough. The Motorcraft Ford Taurus was running good. I had a lot of fun out there.”
MORE ON THE WRECK. “I just don’t know what happened. All I know is somebody got in my left-rear and turned me head-on to the wall.”
TAKE YOUR BREATH AWAY? “It took my breath away. That’s probably the hardest hit I ever had.” ARE YOU OKAY? “Yeah, I’m okay.”
THE DRIVERS WERE PATIENT FOR A WHILE. “Like I said before, I did not see the wreck, I don’t know what happened. Again, that’s the last pit stop. Everybody wants to be up front. We were running pretty close up there, but that’s what the fans want to see, so they got to see it today.”
KURT BUSCH—97—Rubbermaid Taurus (finished third)—“It was just an awesome run. This is so much like a college course. You go out there and you go attempt to take the test, and I didn’t fare very well in college. Luckily, I got an opportunity to race race cars for a living, and that’s what this was, it was a big mind test today, to understand what to do when, and this was just a pure education that I have received from these guys. We were best in class today. I believe that the Fords really balance with the Chevys. It seemed like the 12 could run real strong. He had engine problems at the end. But there’s no stopping the DEI cars. They’re strong, we’re missing something, so we have to go and find it.”
BUT YOU WERE STRONG, TOO, ALL DAY. “We were a good Ford. We could do things. We just weren’t able to break the draft and lead.”
ON HIS THIRD-PLACE FINISH. “It was an awesome run for us. This is like a college course right here. You go out and try and learn from all these guys, try to make the right answers and the right decisions on when to draft, when to rub who, when to go with what lane, and I believe that I’ve learned from the best. These guys are good, you just got to be smarter, and that’s the only thing that you can do. These cars are so equal. I believe the cars were balanced with the Chevys, the Pontiacs and the Dodges, but there’s no stopping those DEI cars. They were strong. Congratulations to Junior and Waltrip. I tried to get rid of Waltrip, because I knew he was an alias for the 8 car and it wa such a tough row to hoe. But a third-place effort, it’s awesome, we matched what we did here last year. This Rubbermaid team is for real. We’re doing it.”
RICKY RUDD—28—Havoline Taurus (finished 14th)—“It was a typical restrictor-plate race for us. We couldn’t get any track position at the end of the race. We’re happy that the car is in one piece. We had a really good car at Daytona, but lost it in the wreck down there. Now we got something here that we can take back to the shop and work on. We drove right through the big wreck. I was down on the grass and hurt the valence, but nothing too serious there. I think I got hit just a little in the back, but that was it.”
DALE JARRETT—88—UPS Taurus (finished sixth)—“Our car was good when we had another car shoved up behind us. Otherwise, it was like someone threw a parachute when we were out in front with clean air. But we were able to get a good finish out of it and we’re happy about that.”
GEOFFREY BODINE—09—Miccosukee Indian Gaming Reserve Taurus (finished 12th)—“Well, we missed the wreck again. We were looking like we were going to have another good finish like Daytona, but the caution re-start, then we got ganged-up and just couldn’t get in the right place. Nobody wanted to help me. Of course, everyone’s working for themselves at that point. We’re still happy with it. The car’s in one piece, we’ll take it back to Daytona and try again down there. I’m just glad we missed the wreck. I hope nobody got hurt, I haven’t heard. It always happens, doesn’t it?”
JEFF BURTON—99—Citgo Taurus (finished ninth)—“I don’t know why anybody should be surprised, we couldn’t run at Daytona with them, and they gave us more spoiler coming here. I mean there is no way we can run with them. It’s common sense. We couldn’t run with them at Daytona, they took the spoilers off so we could run with them, then they give the spoiler back and they want us to run with them. Chevrolet never comes on the short end of the stick. They never have. I don’t know why. They never have. And you couldn’t win. There wasn’t a Ford in the field that could win. No way.”
KURT BUSCH Press Conference
“We’re ecstatic about it, and we’ve got heavy hearts in the back of our minds, trying to continue forward. Jack’s just an incredible individual. He’s given me so much in my career, the least I could do would be go out and win a race for him. So, we’re going to continue to press forward. Things were great today. It just seemed to flow together. We learned some things in the draft, obviously, from 2000, 2001, and it’s just been a matter of time, working with these guys, developing the repoire and working towards the front. I knew we had a great car. The Fords seemed to be balanced with the Chevys, the Pontiacs and the Dodges. They just weren’t balanced with the DEI cars. They’re strong. We’ve got to figure out what they’re doing. I tried to get rid of Michael Waltrip about 30 laps to go, maybe it was 60, 70 laps to go and Dale Jr. ran the top line, everybody gathered it back up. It’s just a hard race. You’re just trying to take away aliases out there, and that’s teammates, and we even struggled with our teammate at the end of the race, he just didn’t seem to want to go with me to help out, and so I tried to put things that I’ve learned together and move forward and we ended up with a third-place finish.”
WAS IT ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO GET UP TO THE 8 CAR TO CHALLENGE HIM? “It wasn’t impossible, it was great part on DEI workmanship to get those cars up front and for this cat here, Michael Waltrip, to stick behind him and have the 98 up there messing around with them. It was something that could be dealt with. I ended up roughing up Michael a little bit. I apologized for that, but I’m trying to isolate one of the DEI cars out of there so that Junior could be worked upon. And it was just a struggle to do that. Those guys are strong, they’ve got it figured out, and like I said, there was a balance between all the four cars.”
YOU GOT TOGETHER WITH DALE JARRETT NEAR THE VERY END. HOW MUCH DID THAT HURT YOUR CHANCES? “It’s tough for me to recall that event right now. With six to go or four to go when the green dropped, I knew what my objective was, I understood what I had to do, I didn’t look at any particular car, except for the red one and the blue one up front, whether is was a white one or a yellow one next to me, I don’t know. And what I was trying to do was stay attached to those two Chevys. I don’t remember us getting together. It didn’t seem to slow either one of us down. He still finished top-10, he may not’ve. I don’t think he’ll be upset with what happened. I don’t really recall that event. It really wasn’t anything that led to the final outcome, I don’t believe.”
WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE WRECK HAPPENED? “I was ahead of it. I saw the 29 and 31 together the lap before. I really don’t know what happened. My car, I was positioned on the inside lane, which might not end up being that good when the cars swerve off the wall and come down low. For us, we were lucky to get through unscathed.”
ON THE FORDS WORKING TOGETHER. “It was awesome. I saw the 12, the 6, the 99, the 77, we just all lined up and went, and I’m like, ‘Wow, this is odd. I’ve never seen this before. By 12 laps later it was done with, but I did see the same thing that you saw, and that was with us Fords working together. It seemed like once we all just decided that, hey, ‘If I push this Ford, I’m going to help my own Ford and that Ford behind me is going to go.’ And it worked. It worked for a good segment.”