October 11, 2012 7:02 AM PDT
CONCORD, N.C. — Feeling the effects of two hard crashes in less than six weeks, Dale Earnhardt Jr. knew something was wrong when he continued to experience headaches earlier this week.
Those headaches, caused by concussions suffered in crashes at Kansas Speedway Aug. 29 and Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, will force him to miss the next two NASCAR Sprint Cup races.
Earnhardt, who is 11th in the Chase for the Sprint Cup standings, will miss at least Saturday’s race at Charlotte Motor Speedway and next week’s Chase race at Kansas Speedway.
Regan Smith will replace Earnhardt in the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports car in the next two races.
After suffering from headaches on Sunday and Monday after the Talladega crash, Earnhardt consulted with his sister, Kelley Earnhardt Miller, and agreed to visit Dr. Jerry Petty, a Charlotte neurosurgeon and NASCAR consultant. After going through a battery of tests on Tuesday and Wednesday, Petty concluded that he could not clear Earnhardt to race for at least two weeks.
Earnhardt, who turned 38 on Wednesday, could be out longer, as Petty will have to approve his return.
“I knew having two concussions back-to-back was not a good thing,” Earnhardt said Thursday at Charlotte Motor Speedway as Cup teams began to prepare for practice for Saturday's race. “So I needed to go see somebody regardless of whether I wanted to get out of the car or not. Just for my own well-being—if I didn't need to go get in a racecar and get hit again, I needed somebody to tell me that because I was going to have a hard time making that decision for myself.
“I feel perfectly fine, but I don't want to keep getting hit in the head.”
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Earnhardt will not be allowed to race again until he stops experiencing headaches for four or five days in a row, said Petty, who has treated dozens of NASCAR drivers over the years and also has treated members of the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. Petty said he would then try to induce a headache and if Earnhardt still feels fine, he would drive a racecar for a few laps to make sure he was OK before being cleared to race.
“I trust (Dr. Petty’s) opinion,” Earnhardt said. “That's why I went to see him. He's been a good friend of mine for a long time and has helped me through a lot of injuries before, so I believe when he tells me I don't need to be in the car and I need to take a couple weeks off that that's what I need to do.”
Earnhardt, who suffered a concussion in a 2002 accident at California Speedway, wrecked hard during a tire test Aug. 29 at Kansas Speedway, an accident that he said registered 40 Gs of G-force. He said he wrecked after blowing a right-front tire.
“I remember everything about that accident and everything after that accident, but I knew that I didn't feel … you know your body, and you know how your mind works, and I knew something was just not quite right,” he said.
He then took what he said was a 20-G hit during another crash Sunday at Talladega. Earnhardt was one of 24 drivers swept into a wild, multicar crash on the final lap at Talladega. His car was hit by another car, sending him spinning down the track.
“I was hit in the left rear quarterpanel, and it was sort of an odd kind of a collision where the car spun around really quick and just sort of disoriented me,” Earnhardt said of the crash at Talladega.
Earnhardt said he was examined by doctors in an ambulance after his wreck at Kansas Speedway. NASCAR officials did not require him to see another doctor. Earnhardt admitted he was only “80 percent” two weeks after the Kansas accident. He ran in races at Atlanta, Richmond, Chicago, New Hampshire and Dover after the Kansas crash and before Sunday’s race at Talladega.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. sustained his concussion in the melee that collected 24 cars on the final lap at Talladega. (AP Photo)
He said he had told crew chief Steve Letarte that the team might need a backup driver at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the race that came five days after the Kansas accident, but that he eventually felt good enough to race.
“I regret not seeing somebody (again) after that happened,” Earnhardt said. “I was stubborn, and I'd had concussions before and thought I knew what I was dealing with and felt like that I was capable of doing my job.”
Earnhardt was not examined by doctors at Talladega because he was able to drive his car away from the scene of the accident and across the finish line. He finally went to see Dr. Petty on Tuesday.
“If I was to volunteer myself to medical attention (after Kansas) and be removed from the car, I didn't know how difficult it would be to get back in,” Earnhardt said. “But I was honest with Steve and told Steve, I said, ‘When we get to Atlanta and if I don't feel good, I'm going to be honest with you and tell you that we need to have something as a backup plan for me to get out of the car.’
“I wasn't going to drive the car if I felt like I was going to deal my crew chief and my team a short hand that weekend. That’s kind of the same reason I waited until (mid-week).”
Earnhardt, whose father died of a severe head injury following a crash on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, said that the Sprint Cup cars he races are “incredibly safe.”
“The cars are fine,” he said. “There's just some things that you can't control. … I have no worries about that.
Petty said that it is encouraging that Earnhardt is only suffering from headaches. His neurological and MRI tests showed no damage to his head or brain.
“His eyes did what they were supposed to do, his balance tests and so forth are perfect,” Petty said. “The biggest, the one test, the one symptom that is more important than all the tests is headache, and as long as there's any headache, the brain is not healed.
“And until that's healed and had some time to rest and then you provoke it again and can't make it happen again, then you feel like you're on the road to recovery.”
Team owner Rick Hendrick said Earnhardt should be commended for seeking treatment on his own.
“A lot of guys would try to play hurt, but when the doctor tells you if you get hit again like right away, it could be catastrophic, so I think this deal has worked out extremely as well as it could,” Hendrick said.
Earnhardt hopes to be able to finish the season. He won the race at Michigan International Speedway June 17 and was second in points at the end of the 26-race regular season. He has gotten off to a slow start in the 10-race Chase, however, and fell to 11th in the standings after a 20th-place finish last week at Talladega.
“I feel perfectly normal and feel like I could compete if I were allowed to compete this weekend,” Earnhardt said. “But I think that the basis of this whole deal is that I've had two concussions in the last four to five weeks, and you can't layer concussions.
“It gets extremely dangerous. … It’s frustrating (but) I really didn’t get to make the decision. I left it in the hands of the docs, and I’m going to do what they tell me to do.”
