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Tony Stewart

Tony Stewart has broken back, will miss Daytona 500

Jeff Gluck
USA TODAY Sports
Tony Stewart broke his back in an ATV accident and will miss the Daytona 500.

CHARLOTTE -- Tony Stewart will miss the start of his final NASCAR Sprint Cup season after undergoing back surgery Wednesday to repair a burst fracture of his L1 vertebra, Stewart-Haas Racing said Thursday.

An interim driver was not named and a timetable was not given for Stewart's return.

Stewart suffered the injury while riding in a sand car with a group in Southern California on Sunday. He was transported to a local hospital and then flown to North Carolina on Tuesday night, where he was admitted to a Charlotte-area hospital.

SHR said Stewart is expected to make a "full recovery" and return to the No. 14 car this season, which had already been announced as his last.

Stewart, 44, will miss the Daytona 500, a crown jewel event he has not won in his 17-year career.

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A burst fracture is a spinal injury which occurs most often in either car crashes or falls from a significant height. The vertebra cannot handle the load when the compression occurs and gets crushed, spreading out the bones.

That type of injury is worse than a compression fracture, which is what Denny Hamlin suffered in 2013 during a crash at Auto Club Speedway. Hamlin did not require surgery but missed four races and part of a fifth.

Sprint Cup driver Greg Biffle told SiriusXM radio Wednesday night that the dunes are ‘’unpredictable’’ and said it’s possible to ‘’land harder on some spots than others.”

"I've knocked the wind out of myself, I've thought I'd broken my tailbone or back before," he said. "Things can happen. I don't know exactly what happened (to Stewart), but it can be done."

Andrew Pollak, professor of orthopaedics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, notes that “a burst fracture … tends to be associated with a higher-energy type mechanism like a motor vehicle collision or a fall from a height.”

Pollak told USA TODAY Sports that sometimes an off-road vehicle can send drivers ‘’flying up in the air, (they) hit a big bump and land real hard. You kinda land on your bottom on the seat and get shoved forward, or even worse, flip the thing over and land on your head and have it (the spine) compressed that way.”

The L1 is one of the two most common areas for a burst fracture to occur “because it is a transition area between the two parts of the spine.”

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The extent of the injury and time needed to recover could make mapping an exact return difficult.

“He could be back in a car driving as early as six weeks and I would say driving competitively as early as 3-4 months,” Pollak said, but he stressed every case is different. “… There’s variability in there. In some high-performance athletes where they want to get back to performing at a high level  sooner, you could imagine a scenario where somebody who has an injury that you would otherwise be able to treat in a brace for three months, you might decide to go ahead and fix so he could get back to driving sooner. It’s possible that depending on the severity of the injury, he could be back as soon as 4-6 weeks.

“You get them to the point where they have a high enough level of comfort – they’re pain-free – in the process of driving.”

Pollak also said Stewart could have issues with back pain and arthritis later as a result of the injury.

This will be the third time Stewart has missed races in the last four years after making every start in his first 14 seasons.

In 2013, Stewart was forced out of the final 15 races after breaking his leg in a sprint car crash in Iowa. The next year, he missed three races in the aftermath of the incident that killed Kevin Ward Jr. in a sprint car race in upstate New York.

Stewart ran a full season last year but only managed to finish 28th in the series standings.

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The back injury means Stewart will not get a chance to race in what was supposed to be his final Daytona 500.

But Thursday's news doesn't mean his championship hopes are over. When he returns, NASCAR will likely make him eligible for a medical waiver (as it did when Kyle Busch missed the first 11 races of the season last year while recovering from a broken leg and foot suffered in an Xfinity Series crash at Daytona).

Should Stewart get himself into the top 30 in points and win a race, he would make the 16-driver Chase for the Sprint Cup playoff.

Contributing: Heather Tucker

Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck

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