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Tony Stewart broke his right leg in a sprint car wreck on Monday night at Southern Iowa Speedway. He will miss this weekend's race at Watkins Glen at the very least – road-course specialist Max Papis will fill in – and this almost certainly kills his chances of winning another Sprint Cup championship.

According to Stewart-Haas Racing, a replacement driver for Sunday’s Cheez-It 355 at Watkins Glen International has not yet been determined. Stewart is 11th in the standings, and with one victory this season, leads the race for the first Wild Card in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup.

UPDATE: Stewart will undergo a second surgery. According to Stewart Haas Racing, the first surgery "served as a preliminary procedure to stabilize and clean the Grade 2 injury." Stewart remains hospitalized for observation.

"It looked like he got into a lapped car," race winner Brian Brown told The Des Moines Register. "When I got close, he was flipping cage down. I didn't really have time to watch and see what was going on."

Although former NASCAR driver Jason Leffler was killed earlier this year in a sprint-car crash in New Jersey, Stewart maintains close ties to his short-track roots by scheduling roughly 70 sprint car events per year. Friday at Pocono Raceway, Stewart brushed off the Ohsweken accident as routine.

“You guys (in the media) need to watch more sprint car videos and stuff. It’s starting to get annoying this week about that. That was just an average sprint car wreck. When they wreck, they get upside down like that. That was not a big deal,” he said. “… I guarantee you, there were 15, 20 guys across the country who flipped just like that this weekend. We’re just fine. If it’s bad, we’ll let you guys know.”

Stewart of course cancelled a Tuesday testing session at Atlanta Motor Speedway, and the team announced Tuesday that Papis will replace him at Watkins Glen. The team did not reveal how long Stewart will be out.

"I told someone to go get my phone or else I was going to get up and get it myself," Stewart wrote on his Facebook page. "Finally got reconnected to the world and just want to say thank you for all the prayers and well wishes. My team will remain strong and I will be back."

This would be the first Cup race without Stewart since 1998, a string of 521 consecutive starts.

Stewart is currently 11th in the Chase for the Sprint Cup, and with a win does hold one of the wild-card spots. However, missing significant time will likely drop him below fellow one-win drivers Ryan Newman and Martin Truex Jr., who are 10th and 19th points behind Stewart, respectively.
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