former NASCAR driver and owner Dick Brooks was piloting a plane on his private airstrip in Woodruff, SC. The plane never left the ground, but went off the runway, hit a bump and overturned. Brooks is in the intensive care unit at Spartanburg Regional. The NTSB will be investigating. Brooks was badly hurt in a motorcycle crash back in 1999.(paraphrased from the www.newschannel7online.com site), Brooks won one race in Winston Cup, at Talladega in 1973, also owned a team back in the early 1990’s. ALSO more at the Greenville News : Brooks, the 1969 NASCAR rookie of the year, was cleaning out a hangar for a New Year’s Eve party when he decided to run one of his antique planes, according to Flash Millwood, a member of Brooks’ pit crew and a friend for 35 years. Brooks wasn’t planning on flying and didn’t have his seat belt on, Millwood said. He was being treated at Spartanburg Regional Hospital, a spokeswoman said. Brooks, who owns several automobile dealerships in the Carolinas and Florida, started racing NASCAR in 1969, driving in the first race he ever saw: a road-course event at Riverside, Calif. He won his only Winston Cup race at Talladega, Ala., in 1973. Brooks hung up his racing gear in 1985 then worked as a pit reporter for Motor Racing Network. It’s not the first time his passion for fast cars, motorcycles and airplanes has put Brooks in the hospital. He suffered severe injuries in July 1999 after he wrecked his motorcycle in a field near his home. Brooks has been involved in the fund-raising for the Motorsports Museum of the South, which is scheduled to be finished in Spartanburg next year.(12-30-2003) UPDATE: Former NASCAR Rookie of the Year Dick Brooks has been hurt in a plane crash near his farm, authorities say. Brooks, 61, was taxiing his favorite plane down his personal runway Sunday afternoon when a wheel got caught in the grass and turned the plane over, longtime friend Joe Whisenant said. Brooks was taken to the intensive care unit of the Spartanburg Regional Medical Center after the crash, but his daughter Stacy Jackson said doctors expect him to recover. “They are wanting to keep him here a couple of days for observation,” Jackson said.( ThatsRacin.com/AP )(12-31-2003)
