Jack Roush returns to racing at Michigan track

BROOKLYN, Mich.

It was back to business for Jack Roush at Michigan Speedway on Friday.

With stopwatch in hand, the Cat in the Hat clicked off the qualifying lap of Greg Biffle.

Risky business

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It was hard to believe Roush, 68, was released from the hospital on Tuesday after sustaining injuries from a plane crash at Oshkosh, Wisc., on July 27th — 17 days ago. Roush’s most recent accident occurred eight years and three months after his first plane crash in Troy, Ala.

But returning to the track seemed to be the best medicine for Roush to continue the healing process.

“It’s Michigan,” said Roush, who lives in nearby Livonia. “That’s pretty big incentive to be here.”

It was just as good a medicine for his drivers.

"I tell you what, Jack has a way of getting the most out of you," Biffle said after qualifying sixth. "And it was really great to see him right before I took to the track."

Roush said he filed his report with the National Transportation Safety Board on Friday. He explained while on arrival to the airport 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.”

Roush sustained multiple injuries in his accident but expects to recover except for the loss of sight in his left eye. Roush “damaged” his left cheek, broke his jaw and experienced a compression fracture in his back. Currently, he’s wearing a back brace and has trouble breathing from his nose.

Despite losing sight in his left eye, Roush didn’t feel that it would preclude him from doing what he loves the most — flying.

“I think it’s very likely that I’ll be able to fly,” Roush said. “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.”

Roush was intent on returning to his hometown track this weekend. Roush has 11 wins, 46 top-five and 83 top-10 finishes on the 2-mile track. But Roush has unfinished business for the rest of the season as well — making sure his top drivers are contending for the championship.

“It’s good to be here and be able to operate my stopwatch and time my cars,” Roush said with a smile. “I have a couple of weeks here to make up for that. It was good for Greg to get a win. We’ve been running well. We just haven’t been getting the results that we’ve needed. I feel great. It felt good to get the monkey off my back — he was sliding pretty hard. Carl had a pole. We ran good at Chicago. We had a pole at Watkins Glen.

“We started the year off with some things in our engineering that didn’t work as well as it did the year before — and certainly the year before that. It took a while to identify what they were, to figure out what the remedies were. I think we’re all set to have a great finish of the year here if we cannot have wrecks and things don’t fall apart, we have a good chance of putting three of our four cars back in the Chase. If we can win races in the Chase and finish well up in the points, it will be a good year for us.”

Roush already considers himself a lucky man. He knows with the caliber of management at Roush Fenway Racing, the shop was well tended to in his absence. And certainly, after so many pivotal comebacks on and off the track, he’s humble enough to realize that the show goes on with or without him.

“Roush Fenway Racing is bigger than Jack Roush,” he said. “It’s bigger than any one individual. We have the plans in place to be able sustain ourselves through any unexpected changes in personnel for the foreseeable future.

“This was just a wake up call. This was a fire drill to see what happens.”