Bo Butner, a NHRA Competition Eliminator driver and 2006 champion, raced for years without injury.
 
His luck ran out in June 5.
 
Nearly three months -- and a couple of surgeries later -- the Floyds Knobs, Ind., resident is recovering from a freak accident in the pits at Route 66 Raceway at Joliet, Ill. And he's overcoming a devastating blow to his family business. 
 
Butner was injured not in his race car but rather in a golf cart, as he delivered tickets for the United Association Nationals to a friend.

Bo Butner, a NHRA Competition Eliminator driver and 2006 champion, raced for years without injury.
 
His luck ran out in June 5.
 
Nearly three months -- and a couple of surgeries later -- the Floyds Knobs, Ind., resident is recovering from a freak accident in the pits at Route 66 Raceway at Joliet, Ill. And he's overcoming a devastating blow to his family business. 
 
Butner was injured not in his race car but rather in a golf cart, as he delivered tickets for the United Association Nationals to a friend.
 
He suffered a broken left femur and ankle and underwent a five-hour surgery at Joliet's Silver Cross Hospital that Friday night that left him with four pins inserted into his leg to stabilize the bones.
 
"It's still tough to get through," Butner said as he anticipated the start of physical therapy sometime in September.
 
He was riding in a golf cart with John Meaney, of Hartland, Mich. Both Butner and Meany, the computer and electronic fuel injection wizard and founder of Big Stuff 3, were ejected from the golf cart when the friend's pick-up truck struck it from behind.
 
Meaney had been recovering from arm and shoulder surgeries but was not hospitalized.
 
"It happened where the blacktop and the gravel met," Butner said. "The golf cart flipped in the air twice. It landed on my foot first, then on top of me."
 
The friend, he said, was with his own father in the truck. The friend was trying to give Butner a slight tap to the rear of the golf cart as a playful gesture but went to hit the brake and accidentally mashed down on the accelerator instead.
 
"He's taking it a lot harder than me," Butner, who has been hobbling around in a boot cast and on crutches, said.  
 
Compounding the disaster for Butner was the fact the accident came one day after a fire heavily damaged the reconditioning shop of his family-owned used-car dealership at Clarksville, Ind., just across the Ohio River from Louisville, Ky.
 
Family friends said a welding accident was to blame.
 
"It was an eventful week," Butner said. "But everything's going good with that." 

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