NASCAR 2018 - News & Discussion

[Ian-S]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Charlotte is just considered "home" because that is the area where most of the teams are based and the hall of fame is ther, in the same way that Silverstone is considered the home race for most teams based near Banbury.

[erwin greven]

[Antonov]

Talk of Dane Earnhardt Jr coming back in 2019 after a good showing at Richmond last night.

[DoubleFart]

Talk of Dane Earnhardt Jr coming back in 2019 after a good showing at Richmond last night.

Dale's Danish cousin?

[erwin greven]

Dale did a one off. And the only talks are that he may do a single off next year.

[Ian-S]

There's no way Dale will come back full time, he's not suicidal nor is he stupid. Watch those interviews that are on YouTube, they are very telling, he came very close to dying / being a veggie as as result of one too many hits, and it took months to recover from his last concussion so no, no way he'll come back, he has a wife and daughter and a business to run, so nope it's just rampant speculation wishful thinking from someone who needs to fill column inches.

It's the equivalent to saying Nico Rosberg will return to F1, he won't, simple as that.

[erwin greven]

Exactly. I was amazed he did this one off in the first place.

[theracer120]

isn't it seen as a sort of home of NASCAR? (next to Daytona of course)

The Charlotte 600 used to be the biggest race of the year after the Daytona 500, and it and Atlanta were built in 1960 which made it the first large tracks built for NASCAR that lasted after Darlington (built 1950) and Daytona (built 1959). I'm not sure if it's considered to be quite as significant nowadays as it was back in the 60s-90s or so.

[Antonov]

There's no way Dale will come back full time, he's not suicidal nor is he stupid. Watch those interviews that are on YouTube, they are very telling, he came very close to dying / being a veggie as as result of one too many hits, and it took months to recover from his last concussion so no, no way he'll come back, he has a wife and daughter and a business to run, so nope it's just rampant speculation wishful thinking from someone who needs to fill column inches.

It's the equivalent to saying Nico Rosberg will return to F1, he won't, simple as that.

what sort of accidents was Dale involved in that gave him these concussions?

[Everso Biggyballies]

Fairly recent (the last 5 years to his retirement anyway) and well publicised ones even I as a non NASCAR follower /fan was aware of. He referred to himself as a hypocrite regarding his actions knowing of the dangers promoted by history of concussion and its potential prognosis with future injury. He had several potential concussions he basically ignored and swept under the carpet by hiding symptoms from medical guys.

1. While coming clean about his head injury at a press conference in October 2012, which he describes as the moment when he suddenly — “whether I wanted to be or not” — became the spokesperson for concussions in auto racing:

“I’ve always known that my voice has carried some weight, just because of my name and the popularity that’s always come with that, and then, thankfully, because we’d had some success on the racetrack. I don’t think I realized it right in that moment as it was happening, but that weekend at Martinsville, that was the first time I had a platform to really help people that I hadn’t thought about before. All those patients I saw at Micky’s (Dr. Michael “Micky” Collins, director of the concussion program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) — and he sees thousands of patients every year — and how many others who don’t go to the doctor? Instead they sit at home, in the fog, just hoping it will clear up one day.

“From October 2012 until this day, I’ve been trying to speak to them.”

2. And yet, after a crash at Texas Motor Speedway in April 2014, when he suffered another concussion:

“I told no one. Amy (Earnhardt, his wife) knew I didn’t feel well because she’s the one who has to look after me every day, but I didn’t share everything with her either. The only place where I exposed the true details of what I felt was in the notes app on my iPhone. The morning after the Texas crash, I opened that app and started regularly writing out the details of whenever I felt bad. I’ve been doing it ever since. A journal of symptoms.

“At first, I don’t think I even really understood why I started doing it. This sounds morbid, but when I look back now I realize that what I was doing was leaving a trail for others to discover in case something happened to me that kept me from being able to tell them myself.”

3. On keeping secrets about his concussion-related symptoms throughout successful 2014 and ‘15 seasons:

“I felt very guilty about that. I was a hypocrite and I knew it. ...

“I’m willing to admit now that I was hiding my symptoms at the same time I was telling people that other drivers shouldn’t hide theirs. I had fallen right back into that old-school racing mentality. Tape an aspirin to it, tape your eyelids open, put a washcloth on it, write it into your iPhone when no one was looking — whatever it took to stay in the racecar, especially when it was running so well.”

4. Describing the summer of 2016 and the insinuation that his then-fiancee/now-wife Amy had lobbied for him to quit racing:

“This is for anyone who tried — and might still try — to blame Amy. The people who said stuff like, ‘Well, she doesn’t want him to race, so that’s why he’s getting out of the car’ or ‘Getting engaged to her has made him soft’ or ‘I bet while the doctors won’t let him race, she’s at home trying to talk him out of ever coming back.’

“Do you want to know who was setting the alarm every morning and dragging my miserable butt out of bed to do my exercises? Amy. You want to know who set up my gym in our garage and then went in there every day, putting me through my paces like a personal trainer-turned-drill sergeant for two or three hours a day? Amy. It was Amy who recorded video of my exercises in case Micky or Dr. Petty (neurologist Jerry Petty) needed to see them. It was Amy who stood behind me catching that medicine ball and tossing it back, over and over and over again. Amy put up with my whining and complaining. Amy listened to my rambling hours of self-analysis of how my body and brain were feeling and functioning. Amy took the brunt of my temper tantrums on the days when my condition left me no control over my emotions. Amy drove my everywhere. Amy put her shoulder under me when I lost my balance and she caught me when I fell down. ...

“You want to know how many times she said, ‘Dale, I think you need to quit driving racecars’? Zero. Not once.”

5. Immediately after wrecking at Daytona International Speedway in February 2017, Earnhardt was spotted giving himself an eye test to detect symptoms of a concussion in the driver’s seat of his racecar. It garnered a lot of attention, and reminded him that he had the opportunity to use his experiences to educate people. But it also clarified another point for him:

“I think I knew then what I had always known, but Daytona made it official. I didn’t have it in me to do what I needed to do to keep going over the long haul. I was thinking about my head. I was thinking about getting hurt. You can’t race that way. You just can’t. People have always said about racing, ‘Hey man, if you ever get scared, you gotta get out. If you’re out there distracted, you gotta get out.’ I had both of those boxes checked. As February rolled into March and we posted a bunch of so-so finishes in races, I wasn’t shaking those feelings and those distractions. I started worrying that I was wasting Greg’s (crew chief Greg Ives) time and I was wasting the team’s time. I didn’t need to keep doing this.”

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/enter ... 82165.html

[erwin greven]

Thanks for this post @Everso Biggyballies

And to be honest, i don't think Dale is the only driver in NASCAR, and other series, who experience or experienced what he did. I am aware that for some racers, its the only thing they think they are good at: RACING.

Just look at so many sports men and women who go on and on and do not know how to stop. Simply they are scared about the black gap after their career. And some indeed fell into it. Jan Ulrich (cycling) for instance.

[Antonov]

I was watching this race on YouTube



Dale Earnhardt (Sr.)'s crash looks so.. not fatal. But I assume the angle and the lack of safer-wall is what did it?
He lost it by himself also. Somehow I thought he was put into a crash - although Schrader, whom he picked up, probably further worsened the angle of impact.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Dale Earnhardt (Sr.)'s crash looks so.. not fatal. But I assume the angle and the lack of safer-wall is what did it?
He lost it by himself also. Somehow I thought he was put into a crash - although Schrader, whom he picked up, probably further worsened the angle of impact.

More the absence of a HANS device led to his death.... Dale was critical of the device in those days. He died from a fatal basilar skull fracture, the very ailment / injury that a HANS device minimises risk of. Since his death and the mandatory use of a HANS device (plus other safety measures) I dont believe that there has been any further loss of driver life in the cup series.

[Ian-S]

Adam Petty died later that year iirc Chris, it was when that happened NASCAR really sat up and took notice.

Sr also wore an open face helmet which caused other head injuries he was unlikely to survive even without the broken neck.

Regarding Jr, he had a big testing crash at Kansas just after the track was reconfigured and that gave him a bad concussion, then a few weeks later he had what was considered to be a minor wall rub that nearly finished him off at Michigan, with concussion it's not the number of times it happens or the violence of the hit that is the problem, it is the fact that the effects are non-linear, so say you had two identical crashes years apart, the second one would result in more severe concussion.

One of Jr's problems was he had ocular displacement and it took ages to get over that, you literally cannot sit up or walk much less drive a car with it, it's a horrible feeling.

[Everso Biggyballies]

Adam Petty died later that year iirc Chris, it was when that happened NASCAR really sat up and took notice.

February 18, 2001 was Earnheart, May 12, 2000 was Petty.
I think both being such iconic legendary surnames ensured that both deaths were responsible for the sweeping safety changes that happwbws,
Agree also re the open face helmet allowing more injury

[Michkov]