I'll never forget this woman that bought gas off me regularly years ago at my old gas station and she was the biggest Johnny Benson fan. In fact I hadnt seen her come in for weeks and then I heard she had a major cancer operation. I had no idea where she live or anything and so for her I hoped for the best. Then one day I saw her roll into the station with a big smile on her face. The first words out of my mouth were "hey how are you feeling?" and out of hers were "Johnny Benson won last week!" I cant remember if it was a Cup or Busch race, but knowing that her favourite driver had won a Nascar race was more important than anything.

Unofficial reports state 3 broken ribs, a broken wrist, a burn on his elbow and a shoulder injury. Doctors are still assessing other injuries. Media reports from the hospital stated serious but stable condition, but he has since been upgraded to "Fair".

Incidentally, Johnny was not the only open wheel driver injured this weekend...

Normand Beaudreault was injured at Edelweiss (just outside Ottawa) on Friday night in the Empire Super Sprints event...reports say he had a possible stuck throttle and hit the wall very hard...He is in a hospital in Hull with a few crack ribs, a bruised lung, and some injuries to his leg that might require surgery.

Also a few weeks ago Shawn Muldoon suffered a serious foot/leg injury after his throttle stuck at Oswego...He was in hospital for over a week and required multiple surgeries.

Supermodified driver Bobby Bond broke his foot in a hard crash at Toledo Friday night.

Ryan Litt (at Toledo on Friday) and John Riegling (at Ohsweken a week ago) both miraculously escaped injury in very serious sprint car crashes recently.

At the end of May, Midget racer Chad McDaniel was fatally injured at Knoxville.

Needless to say it has been a tough few weeks...hopefully the carnage is behind us for awhile...

BeforeAfter, Ouch!

The trouble with "driver's side" impacts in Supers is that there is no crush zone because of the engine...those sorts of hits don't happen often, but when they do the driver generally seems to sustain some broken bones or some other injury....

Some of the Super fans around here might remember Otto Sitterly's driver's side impact on the frontstretch at Oswego during the Classic a couple of years ago...He was knocked cold in that one.

Johnny B was released from hospital.

http://www.nascar.com/2009/news/headlines/truck/06/17/jbenson.released.hospital.ap/index.html