injury after his private jet blew a tire and skidded off a runway Sunday
night in Phoenix.Kevin Woods, Martin's Winston Cup public relations representative, confirmed the terrifying incident that happened following Sunday's Winston Cup race at Phoenix International Raceway.
"The takeoff had to be aborted and there was some damage to the plane, but no one was injured," Woods said.
There were a total of three people on the Cessna Citation CJ2, a two-engine jet that holds eight, including two pilots.
Jason Simpson was piloting the plane with Martin, who has a license to fly the craft. The lone passenger was Benny Ertel, Martin's business manager.
The jet, which was taking off from Goodyear Airport in Phoenix, had
nearly reached liftoff speed when the plane began to yaw, or move from
side to side."It was real bad," Ertel said. "Jason didn't know if he had lost an engine or a tire blew out and decided to abort the take off."
Simpson killed the engines and applied the brakes and Ertel said the Citation went into a "Talladega skid."
"We went the length of the runway," he said. "As we were sliding along, the other tire blew out. The skidding lasted forever. We're heading right for this electrical box and we all knew we were gonna hit it but the plane stopped like 10 feet short of it."
Just moments after the plane came to a stop, fire engines and rescue crews were on the scene to offer assistance.
"They had to shut the airport down," Ertel said.With many of NASCAR's teams and officials leaving the area at the same time, Martin and Ertel were able to catch a ride back here on a NASCAR jet with sanctioning body president Mike Helton.
Martin's jet suffered some damage. The airport needed a crane to move the jet off the runway. Simpson plans to take the plane to Cessna's home base in Wichita, Kan., later this week to isolate the problem with the jet.
"The important thing is that everybody is OK," Ertel said. "This could have been much worse."
Martin finished fourth in Sunday's Checker Auto Parts 500 in Phoenix. He's 89 points behind leader Tony Stewart in Winston Cup points with one race remaining on the schedule.
Ironically, Stewart's private plane was damaged last week when his jet
struck a deer on takeoff from San Antonio, Texas.Also, earlier this year, Martin's team owner, Jack Roush was critically injured in a plane crash in Alabama. Roush recovered.
Two Winston Cup drivers were killed in air crashes in the early 1990s.
Alan Kulwicki, the 1992 series champion, was killed in 1993 in the crash of a private plane on the way to a race in Bristol, Tenn. Davey Allison died from injuries suffered when he crashed his helicopter on the Talladega Superspeedway property later that year.
