Stewart to Miss Start of Final Season With Back Injury

Tony Stewart will miss the first part of his final season in
NASCAR (Google Images)

Just when you think things can't get more interesting for Tony Stewart, he finds a new way to surprise us.

In 2013, he broke his leg in a dirt car race in Upstate New York prior to the Cup Series race at Watkins Glen. He missed the rest of the season due to his recovery. The next year, on that same race weekend, Stewart accidentally struck and killed Kevin Ward, Jr participating in a dirt track event at Canandaigua Motorsports Park. He has been embroiled in litigation since and has yet to run a dirt car since the accident.

But last season, he announced that 2016 would be his final year on tour and that Clint Bowyer would be the heir to his No. 14 Chevy. He has said that he's more physically fit and in the best shape he's ever been in. It looked like Smoke was going to rise back to the top and have a chance to leave NASCAR a champion, the same shot that Jeff Gordon had this past year.

But Sunday afternoon, while driving in the sand dunes in California with a group that included fellow driver Greg Biffle, Stewart had an accident that resulted in a burst fracture of his L1 vertebrae.He will miss the first part of the Sprint Cup season as a result, including his final shot to win the Daytona 500. Stewart, a three-time Cup Series champion, has not won the "Great American Race" in 17 attempts.

Biffle, who runs sand cars on a regular basis as a hobby, was driving with Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Ray Evernham and drag racer Don "Snake" Prudhomme. Both Biffle and Prudhomme said that, in the dust and sand, Stewart simply got lost from the group.

Stewart was driving a car similar to this when he had
his accident (Google Images)

"What really happened is, it isn't hard to get split off from one another," Prudhomme told NBC Sports. "In other words, if a guy makes a left turn and you're not watching his flags or there's dust or something, you can make a right turn and kind of get lost." Biffle told SiriusXM that he "wasn't near what went on," but that he had started "hearing bits and pieces that he hurt his back."

Prudhomme said that they found Stewart about 90 minutes later. "There was about three of us who went back on our buggies and we came upon him. He was laying there. He got out of it (the sand buggy) and was laying there in the sand on his back." The drag racing legend also said that Stewart was able to move all of his extremities.

There is no timetable set for Stewart's return, but he underwent spinal stabilization surgery on February 3 and could possibly return to the track in May for the Sprint All-Star Race in Charlotte. No substitute has been named to pinch hit (errr... pinch drive) for Stewart either. Bowyer has already inked a one-year commitment with HScott Motorsports to drive the No. 15 5 Hour Energy/Peak Motor Oil Chevy for the 2016 season, so he most likely won't get behind the wheel of Stewart's car until next season, as originally planned.