BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Jack Roush returned to the race track Friday, still bearing the scars of the July 27 plane crash that left the NASCAR team owner hospitalized for two weeks.

Roush said he fractured his back, broke his jaw and lost his left eye in the accident, which occurred as he was attempting to land his jet at a crowded airport in Oshkosh, Wis., for an appearance at a major air show. The two-time Cup champion underwent surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., to treat facial injuries in the crash, but confirmed at Michigan International Raceway that the incident also cost him an eye.

“

There's no restriction -- maybe if you're an airline pilot. There's no reason I can't fly with one eye.

”

-- JACK ROUSH

"I've got a back brace on because I've got some trauma to my back, and I've got some nose packing in my nose, so I'm breathing through my mouth, and those are my two primary discomforts," Roush said. "Everything will come back but the left eye. I've lost the left eye. And because my vision before the problem was 20/15, corrected, and my right eye was my dominant eye, was my primary eye ... I'll still be able to see more than I should."

Although Roush was released from the hospital Thursday, his appearance at Michigan -- a track near his Livonia home and where his Roush Fenway drivers have enjoyed great success over the years -- seemed in doubt until he appeared in the garage area Friday. Roush's return to the track comes two weeks after Greg Biffle won at Pocono Raceway to record the organization's first victory since November of 2009.

"I'm really proud of the way the organization has rallied," Roush said. "We were gaining in our performance, moving from not where I wanted to be in the area of the top 10, and into the top five. ... Roush Fenway Racing will outlive me, and it will outlive anybody else that's with the company today. We've got the plans in place for that, and this was a little test case -- how can you do it without Jack and not have it fail? Well, this is bigger than me. It's bigger than anybody."

Roush wore large, dark sunglasses Friday to conceal a left eye that appeared to be bandaged closed. The car owner, who also survived a 2002 crash of an experimental airplane that left him upside down in an Alabama lake, is a veteran pilot who keeps several aircraft -- including World War II-era P-51 Mustangs -- in a hangar at the Willow Run Airport near Ann Arbor. He sounded like a man intent on flying again.

"I think it's very likely that I'll fly. I've got to get recovered. I have to go through my recovery. Wiley Post was a one-eyed pilot," he said, referring to the 1930s airman who lost his left eye in an oilfield accident and went on to become the first pilot to fly solo around the world. "There's no restriction -- maybe if you're an airline pilot. There's no reason I can't fly with one eye."

Roush's accident occurred upon landing at Wittman Regional Airport during the annual AirVenture show, which draws thousands of spectators and leads to heavy air traffic flying in and out of Oshkosh. Roush was flying his Beechcraft Premier 1A -- his "flying around airplane," he said -- when he had "a conflict in airspace with another airplane" after he had been cleared to land. "I was unable to address the conflict and keep the airplane flying," added Roush, who also filed a report with the National Transportation Safety Board on Friday.

Friend and former Roush driver Mark Martin, himself a pilot, could relate.

"I don't want to get into that much, but when there's an air show ... they've got aircraft that are landing just nose-to-tail, and they might be landing on other runways, on taxiways, all this stuff simultaneously. It's not something you deal with under normal circumstances. Under normal circumstances, they're way spread apart and all of that stuff," said Martin, familiar with the scenario from flying into the annual Sun n' Fun show in Lakeland, Fla.

"Jack got in a situation where he thought, 'How am I going to get out of this without hitting somebody?' Because of all the things that were going on, which is exactly what I thought would happen, because, you know, he's in a jet and there are some very small aircraft at different speeds and those kinds of things, and he just got in a situation where he was uncertain about how he was going to make it all work, got slow and tried to get slowed down and got a little too slow and whatever. It was one of those situations where it was a bad deal."

Drivers, even those who work for rival organizations, seemed genuinely pleased to see Roush back at the race track.

"It means a lot to me to see such an important figure in this sport have something horrible like that happen and come back to the race track," said Clint Bowyer of Richard Childress Racing. "You're rolling out for qualifying and you see somebody like that determined to be at the race track after such a horrifying accident, I had to go shake his hand. It was pretty neat."

Roush seemed happy to be back, too, but also realized that he's fortunate to have survived a pair of crashes.

"I survived two car wrecks, too, both of them in racing," he said. "I've been extraordinarily lucky to have been able to survive, and I feel in some ways unworthy. I'm not sure I've done enough yet for the chances that I've had. Maybe that's recognized, and they're just giving me more time."

Related:
• Roush released from hospital
• Roush upgraded to fair condition after plane crash
• Roush missing from Pocono, but still in action
• Roush transferred to Mayo Clinic in Minnesota
• Roush remains hospitalized after plane crash