{"id":14308,"date":"2014-08-10T14:04:05","date_gmt":"2014-08-10T18:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/?p=14308"},"modified":"2014-08-10T14:16:32","modified_gmt":"2014-08-10T18:16:32","slug":"tony-stewart-comments-on-sprint-car-accident-that-killed-kevin-ward-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2014\/08\/10\/tony-stewart-comments-on-sprint-car-accident-that-killed-kevin-ward-jr\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Stewart comments on Sprint car accident that killed Kevin Ward Jr."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-14293 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2014\/08\/tonystewart.jpg\" alt=\"tonystewart\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" srcset=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2014\/08\/tonystewart.jpg 594w, http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/files\/2014\/08\/tonystewart-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Tony Stewart was involved in an accident on Saturday night at the\u00a0<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Empire Super Sprints series event at the Canandaigua Motorsports Park in upstate New York that left 20 year-old Kevin Ward Jr. dead. No\u00a0<\/span>criminal charges are pending for Stewart, but he chose not to race today and instead Regan Smith will be in the No. 14 for the Cheez-it 355 at Watkins Glen.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stewart released the following statement Sunday afternoon.<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There aren&#8217;t words to describe the sadness I feel about the accident that took the life of Kevin Ward Jr. It&#8217;s a very emotional time for all involved and it is the reason I&#8217;ve decided not to participate in todays race at Watkins Glen. My thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and everyone affected by this tragedy.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph7\" style=\"color: #000000;\">A <a title=\"Tony Stewart kills driver at dirt track, will not race at Watkins Glen (Video)\" href=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/2014\/08\/10\/tony-stewart-kills-driver-at-dirt-track-will-not-race-at-watkins-glen\/\">video released of the incident shows<\/a> two cars coming out of a turn Saturday night with Stewart&#8217;s No. 14 car sliding up the track toward Ward&#8217;s No. 13 car. The two cars get close and appear to make contact before Ward&#8217;s car hits the wall and spins out.<\/p>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\" async=\"\"><\/script><!-- medium in story ad --> <ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 468px; height: 15px;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6139055459619465\" data-ad-slot=\"9984433490\"><\/ins><script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph8\" style=\"color: #000000;\">Ward Jr. gets out of his wrecked car and begins walking towards the race cars on the track during a yellow flag. He begins pointing his finger and appears to be yelling when a car swerves to miss him. Stewart passes close to Ward on the track, then what appears to be his right rear tire hits him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cnn_storypgraphtxt cnn_storypgraph10\" style=\"color: #000000;\">Ward was transported by ambulance to a local hospital but died before arrival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Stewart was involved in an accident on Saturday night at the\u00a0Empire Super Sprints series event at the Canandaigua Motorsports Park in upstate New York that left 20 year-old Kevin Ward Jr. dead. No\u00a0criminal charges are pending for Stewart, but he chose not to race today and instead Regan Smith will be in the No. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[786,788],"tags":[789,708,637],"coauthors":[674],"class_list":{"0":"post-14308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar-topstory","8":"category-news","9":"tag-front","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-tony-stewart"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14308"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nascar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}