Cody Ware will be the third driver to miss time due to an injury suffered in a NASCAR Cup Series race this season. Ware suffered an ankle injury during his crash two weeks ago at the Texas Motor Speedway and was fit for a walking boot on his right foot at Talladega. He would race last Sunday on the high-speed Alabama oval, but on Tuesday, announced that he’ll sit out this weekend’s Bank of America ROVAL 400 (2 p.m. ET, NBC, PRN) at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL.
Racing on an oval is one thing, on a road course is entirely different. Ware, 26, announced on social media his intentions to sit out of his No. 51 Ford and allow JJ Yeley to replace him instead. He’ll return to the car a week later in Las Vegas.
Yeley has made 15 Cup starts this season — 14 of which have been for RWR.
On Twitter, Ware clarified he suffered an impact fracture and torn ligaments in the Texas incident.
Ware scored a career-best sixth-place finish at Daytona International Speedway in the regular-season finale and was on pace to complete his first full-time season in the NASCAR Cup Series. Ware has 86 career starts at the sport’s top level in addition to 28 Xfinity Series starts and seven starts in the Camping World Truck Series.
“I think we just got pretty free on entry on one of the times into Turn 3 and 4, and the car just kind of shot up the track, and I think once I hit the bump, it kind of sealed our fate there,” he said on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio of the crash last Tuesday
“That first impact on the outside wall, from what we’ve seen with the car and everybody from NASCAR (and) the team looking over it, it looks like the throttle got hung after the first hit, and so once we were making our way… obviously (I was) trying to get the car stopped, trying to get the brake pedal down. But at that point with the throttle hung, there wasn’t much I could do to get the car slowed down, and unfortunately was a passenger of my own car heading toward the pit road wall.
“Up until the last 50 feet or so, it looked like I was pretty much headed toward that corner there, but at the end of the day, obviously, the wheel was already bent in from the right front. It was caved into the firewall after the first impact, so I didn’t have any way to steer and maneuver the car. Obviously, I tried to do that, but wasn’t able to. Thankfully, once I came out of the grass and onto pit road itself, the car corrected to the right a little bit, and I was able to thankfully avoid the corner of the pit road entry/exit.
“Obviously, it could have been a lot worse, but all in all, to walk away just with some of the foot and ankle pain and in a position where I probably won’t have to miss Talladega, I think that things could have been a lot worse for sure.”
Ware climbed out of his car under his own power but quickly dropped to the ground in pain. He was transported to the infield care center before being released a little while later.
“It was a little rough after the incident on Sunday, but I had a great group of guys around me,” he says. My team, as well as NASCAR medical, did a good job of taking care of me, treating me, and diagnosing what all was going on.
“Right now, not dealing with too much pain, just trying to do some physical therapy and recover,” he continued. “More or less just dealing with some stretched ligaments and a lot of bruising and swelling in my foot and ankle.”
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