Hornish Describes 'Wild Ride' Crash

Hornish flipped his Penske Dallara Toyota after running over some of the debris when Dana hit the wall at Turn Two.

Dana sustained a fractured spine and concussion, but was in a good condition. Hornish was uninjured and has been passed fit for Saturday's MBNA pole day.

"I came around the corner there, and saw the yellow," Hornish said. "I thought this isn't going to be fun. I was on the brakes, trying to slow down. But you don't want to get on it too hard. Kosuke Matsuura got on it real hard the other day when Buddy Rice crashed and spun, so I was like, 'Need to slow it down.'

"One of the half-shafts came out of Paul's car and was cart-wheeling down the track. I thought, 'That's going to hurt a lot worse if I hit that,' because you clip the bottom of that you don't know which direction it's going to go. It's a long piece of steel rod that's going to come back into the cockpit, so I thought I'll go over there and as soon as I looked over I thought, 'Well, I'd better centre that piece of debris, whatever it is'. I hit it.

"I then thought, 'That's going to tear up the bottom of the car.' I hit it hard enough that it shook my head so I was looking down. I then thought, 'That's going to hurt the car'.

"Then I looked up and all I could see was the fence, so then I was like, 'Maybe the car's not that big of a deal right now'.

"It was definitely the wildest ride that I can say I've ever taken in one of these cars, but probably the least amount of injury you can have too.

"I was hoping I didn't get caught up in the fence because that starts whipping everything around and it's a lot easier when the car is like a piece of Styrofoam flipping through the air. Everything seems to jerk around and accelerate when you touch anything as far as the fence or whatever.

"I didn't even realize I'd hit my knee until I was sliding upside down, and I thought, 'That hurts just a little bit'.

"I stopped, called the guys and told them on the radio I'm OK. They're like, 'What? Are you OK?' 'Yeah, I'm OK'.

"I thought the antenna's got to be gone because the one sidepod was ripped off and both antennas on top of the car were gone, so I threw that out. I kind of braced myself because I've heard stories of people letting themselves go when the belts release, so I just put one hand down, turned the other one belt lock and started crawling out. The safety guys were there.

"I was unbuckled and starting to come out, but when I was trying to get out my HANS device kept getting stuck in the grass so I had to have them help me take that off. It was interesting.

"My helmet wasn't on the ground. The roll hoop bent a little bit but it was fully intact, but it was good as far as that goes."