HYPHENATES

Even the best pilots flame out once in a while. Just ask Tom Cruise, who luckily escaped injury when his Nissan 200SX hit the wall during the Sports Car Grand Prix at Pocono International Raceway in Pennsylvania over the weekend. Cruise got out of the car himself and walked to an ambulance. He was taken to the infield hospital and released. Cruise, who races for fellow actor-racer thespian Paul Newman’s Danbury, Conn.-based Newman-Sharp team, was a little crestfallen at his bad luck: “I wanted to improve on (Saturday’s) second-place finish. . . . I was following (teammate Scott Sharp) into turn one, and I lost the draft.”