ORLANDO, Fla. —Still recovering from an ATV accident last March, Tracy Hines was at the third annual Mopar Sprint & Midget Classic working as a crew chief for sprint-car driver Cole Whitt.
Hines, who suffered multiple broken bones, is having the most trouble with his left knee, which does not have enough range of motion at this point to allow him to sit upright in a sprint car or midget without extensive swelling afterward.
“If it was a Truck or a Busch car, it would be no problem,” he said, “but these cars are too tight.”
Hines injured all four ligaments in the left knee, three of which were replaced and the fourth was repaired.
He expects to be 100 percent by March but is hoping he will be able to compete in the Chili Bowl Nationals in January.
Hines will return to his ride with Tony Stewart Racing when fully recovered.

• Brad Sweet has been named the permanent replacement to Kevin Swindell in the second Kasey Kahne USAC entry. Sweet drove both the midget and sprint car, as a teammate to Brady Bacon, here and will be full time with the Mopar-sponsored team next season.

• A pair of surprises were fast qualifiers at Orlando Speedworld Thursday. Ricky Ehrgott topped the midget charts, while Brian Gingras was the sprint-car top qualifier.
Gingras, who is in his first year of sprint-car racing, was rookie of the year in the TBARA winged sprint-car series in Florida, winning twice.
He drove Dick Myers’s No. 50 at Orlando. He started sixth and finished fifth in the feature.

• Daryl Smith was uninjured in a wild flip after the checkered flag waved in the sprint-car B main.
When the rest of the field slowed, Smith kept coming at full speed and rammed the back of Dave Baumgartner’s No. 5, with the contact sending Smith into a series of barrel rolls down the frontstretch.