Injured Wilson to miss rest of season; Scheckter stands in at New Hampshire

The Briton will be replaced in the #22 Dreyer & Reinbold car by Tomas Scheckter in this weekend's Indy 225 at New Hampshire.

Wilson sustained the back injury after running wide on the exit of Turn 1 and crashing over an access road which caused his car to bottom out. The 33-year-old was taken to a local hospital before being flown back to Indianapolis where he was told by IndyCar Series medical director Dr Michael Olinger that he would be out of action for at least three months while he recovered from his injury.

"Obviously, I have a little bit of a backache, but I'm just frustrated to not be at the racetrack," said Wilson, who has now been released from hospital with a back brace. "I think that we just started to get our season turned around and the car was really good at Mid-Ohio and I'm disappointed about that.

"I know that I'm going to miss the ovals and I think we've found some good stuff that was going to help our oval performance.

"So I'm just disappointed to not be in the car, but my back is the most important thing. I'm going to try and get that to heal and get back to 100 percent as soon as possible and get back in the car. Also, the response has been incredible and it's really nice to see that rather it's on Twitter from the fans, or drivers and ex-drivers.

"Everyone has been really supportive, so thank you to all of them."

Scheckter, who makes his second IndyCar start of the season this weekend having raced for KV Technology in the Indianapolis 500, has competed in 14 events for D&R over the past three years and was an obvious choice to fill in at short notice.

The South African has only been confirmed for one race however with the team preferring to consider its options for the five races following New Hampshire.

"We are talking about a lot of things on how we want to approach the rest of the year with the three road courses," said D&R general manager Larry Curry. "The next time we see our trucks in Indy will be after Labor Day, and then we only have four days to have the stuff ready for Japan. So we have to make some decisions quickly for the Infineon test.
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"Even though we get that extra run time there Thursday (practice day), we have to cut to the chase fast. We know him [Scheckter] and he knows us, and it will take him only two or three laps to know what he needs out of the car and how we can adjust it.

"It was more of a choice based on who was available and who we had a relationship with. That was pretty simple actually."