Ailing Stewart expects to race this weekend

CONCORD, N.C. – There is no disabled list in NASCAR, where playing hurt is mandatory – even for defending series champion Tony Stewart.

Stewart is expected to start this weekend in Dover, Del., despite a broken shoulder blade that knocked him out of Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. Ricky Rudd, who hasn’t raced this season, will practice and qualify the car and be on standby to relieve Stewart if he needs to get out of the car.

“You know he’s going try,” Jimmy Makar, vice president of Joe Gibbs Racing, said Tuesday. “We’ve got to try to start the race for points, even if he just gets out after a few laps. I feel like he should be able to do that.”

Under NASCAR’s unforgiving scoring system, a driver must start a race to receive any points. He can be replaced in the car anytime after the first lap.

It eliminates any option of missing a race because it would cripple a driver’s championship hopes.

This injury has already hurt him in the standings – he dropped from second to fourth, 231 points behind leader Jimmie Johnson, after wrecking out of Sunday night’s race and finishing 42nd.

It’s unclear when Stewart was injured. He hit the wall hard in Saturday night’s Busch Series race and was taken to a hospital for X-rays. Doctors cleared him to race Sunday, but a tire problem sent him into the wall again.

Stewart was in obvious pain, favoring his right arm and wincing, as he was helped out of his car. He was on a stretcher when he was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where the broken right scapula was diagnosed. This is Stewart’s second injury this season. He broke a rib in a sprint-car accident in January.

“It’s more of a pain threshold type of thing, Makar said. “As long he can withstand the pain or we can give him some local medicines to deaden that area of his back, he’ll be OK to drive.”

NASCAR will allow Stewart to compete as long as he is medically cleared by a doctor, said competition director Robin Pemberton, who added the stringent points system is unlikely to be changed to accommodate injured drivers.