DOVER, Del. — After suffering a fractured vertebra from a violent head-on hit last Sunday (April 21) at Talladega Superspeedway, Erik Jones has been ruled out for Sunday’s (April 28) Wurth 400 at Dover Motor Speedway.
Dover will be Jones’ first race missed due to injury since the start of his rookie year in 2017, and the injury will end his streak of 262 consecutive NASCAR Cup Series starts.
Following his crash at Talladega, there were questions surrounding his initial medical exam in the infield care center, as he was checked and released and completed media interviews before ultimately returning to the care center a second time. From there, he was transported to UAB Hospital in Birmingham, Ala., where he was released later that night.
On Saturday (April 27), Jones addressed the timeline of his injury following the crash — an injury that he initially thought was muscle strain.
“It hurt when I crashed,” Jones said. “I’ve never broken a bone in my life, so I didn’t even know what that would feel like. I got out of the car on my own, and I was feeling better. Obviously, adrenaline is going, and I’m pumped up still.
“Got to the care center, told them what was wrong — that my back was hurting. They poked and prodded all over me, like they normally do, and I said everything felt OK, and I told them multiple times that it felt like muscle strain to me.
“From there, I got up and I was getting around. I walked into the care center. I got up to leave and was feeling good, was getting released. I talked to a couple of nurses on the way out, and they said if anything changes, just come right back because they were under the same impression — lot of adrenaline — and they could tell that I was hurting a little bit.”
And once the adrenaline of the wreck wore off, Jones made his way back to the care center.
“By the time I got back to the motorhome, after the interviews, I was in more and more pain as time was passing,” Jones said. “Got changed into my clothes and knew I was going to have to go back. It really hurt, and I had some trouble getting around.
“So I went back right away and said there is probably more wrong than what I was letting on to you guys. It is really starting to cause me some pain. So then we made the decision to transport. We took an X-ray there, saw some possible problems, wasn’t really sure with the equipment, so we went ahead and transferred to UAB after…
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