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Earnhardt Says He’s Down But Not Out

Dale Earnhardt Jr. speaks to the media before practice for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Cheez-It 355 at Watkins Glen International. [Credit: Josh Hedges/Getty Images]

Dale Earnhardt Jr. speaks to the media before practice for the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Cheez-It 355 at Watkins Glen International. [Credit: Josh Hedges/Getty Images]

by Joe Jennings

Watkins Glen, N. Y. – With this weekend’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Watkins Glen International, fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr. is missing his third consecutive race due to concussion-like symptoms. Although frustrated with the situation, Earnhardt is heeding the advice of his medical advisors and plans to do so until cleared to race. As part of his therapy, NASCAR’s most popular driver was told to get out and mingle with people, and he did just that on Friday by traveling to the Glen to meet with his team, his fellow competitors and a capacity crowd in the media center.

“It is great to be back and seeing everybody,” he said with a smile. “I’m super nervous coming back. Hadn’t been to the track. I miss my team and my teammates. Amy (Reimann, fiancé) is gone on a trip for the weekend, so I was at the house by myself and was just looking for some things to do. Figured coming to the track wasn’t a bad idea. Get to hang out with my guys a little bit. It just felt so weird not being there, so here we are.”

Regarding guidance offered by his doctor team, he added, “I think my doctors have a good understanding of my history and what I have been through and with their own personal knowledge that they have throughout their careers to give me a clear understanding of when I will be ready to go back and get into a race car. Our intentions are to get cleared and get back to racing. We are just taking it one evaluation at a time. It is frustrating to have to do it that way, but that is the process, and we hope and expect that when we go back for the next evaluation that we are symptom free and can start to see a timeline develop.”

Showing his frustration, Earnhardt commented, “I just want to get better. Nothing else is really a priority except for just getting the symptoms to clear up and get back to feeling like yourself. That is all that I am thinking about. The process isn’t as fast as you would like it to be. I talk to my doctor every other day, sometimes for an hour or two about the psychological side of it because it can become very frustrating and obviously being a race car driver, we don’t have a lot of patience to begin with. But we’ve got some great doctors, and I really believe and trust what they are telling me. I am confident and positive that they tell me without question that we are going to get back to normal. I just have to do what they tell me. There are a lot of activities every day. There is about two to three hours’ worth of physical and mental therapy that I do each day. Not a lot of fun. They want you to do things that really push your mind, and bring out the symptoms. So, in the last evaluation, we really ramped up the therapy to make it a little more strenuous.”

When pressed about whether or not he should continue with his racing career, it was the only time the popular driver showed discomfort, saying, “My doctor thinks that to get through the therapy and to get through the symptoms you don’t need to be adding stress to your life. The stress will slow down the process. So, going into those kinds of conversations aren’t even necessary at this particular point. The point right now is just to get healthy. I’m not thinking about the what-ifs. We went into this with the intentions of getting back in the car when we get cleared. Whenever it happens; it happens. It is frustrating that we’ve had to miss this many races. When we first went into the doctor’s office, we never anticipated being out this long. He indicated a timeline for recovery doesn’t exist as every patient is different. “You just don’t know when the symptoms will stop. Every day I am doing these exercises to sort of retrain the brain to fix the issues that I have with the balance and to gain stability. It will fix itself when it decides to. There is no common history that will tell you that ‘man, this is going to last a month’, or this is going to last…because I’ve had situations that…and I’ve talked to other people with this history that didn’t last this long. That is why it is frustrating.”

Although Earnhardt would like to back behind the wheel soon, he said he hasn’t talked to his doctors about such a step. He noted, “We haven’t really talked about that. I personally would like to get in a race car and drive it at a closed course somewhere. Whether that is one of my late models, or if NASCAR would lift the restrictions on the testing policy to go to do that. That would be the smartest thing to do before actually trying to accomplish an entire race weekend.”

Speaking with conviction, he said in closing, “I have every intention of honoring my current contract. I sat with Rick (Hendrick) before this happened a couple of months ago to talk about an extension. That is the direction that we are going. As soon as I can get healthy and get confident in how I feel and feel like I can drive a car and be great driving it then I want to drive. I want to race. I miss the competition. And as Rick likes to say ‘we’ve got unfinished business.’ I’m not ready to stop racing. I’m not ready to quit, but I’m not going to go in the car until the doctors clear me. When they say I’m good to go I believe them. If they say I’m healthy and I can race I’m going to race.”

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