Racing to the Finish Read online

  Greg Ives took over as crew chief in 2015. His approach was much different than Steve’s had been. Greg is an engineer, so he approaches everything—including me—like that. We’re all part of the equation he’s working on. Steve was a motivator. Greg is a mathematician. I don’t think one is right or wrong; they just aren’t the same approach. Because of that, the 2015 season felt a lot different, but results-wise, we picked right up where we’d left off. We nearly won the Daytona 500 again and started the year with a bunch of top-six finishes.

  I had a couple of crashes early and didn’t take down a single note from either one of them, but my anxiety was high all year. For whatever reason, that season seemed to have more crashes than most and it always felt like they were right on top of me. I was uneasy all the time. It never felt like I could go more than two months or so without someone hitting me. Still, I had no serious concussion symptoms during the first half of the season, at least none that I thought were worthy of taking notes about.

  What is interesting is that when you go back and see what I was saying in my weekly press conferences, before and after races, I sound downright nostalgic. I think that’s a pretty big indicator that I was beginning to think about the end of my career, and it was probably happening much sooner than later.

  Sunday, May 3, 2015

  Talladega Superspeedway

  I was feeling particularly nostalgic when we got to Talladega, the tenth race of the season. On Friday I started telling the media stories about being a kid and hanging out in the Talladega infield with my buddy Brad Means, son of Jimmy “Smut” Means, scavenging for parts and pieces and racing stuff. That race always seems to fall on the same week as my father’s birthday, April 29, and in 2015 he would have turned sixty-four. I would love to tell you that I had commemorated that during past race weeks, but I hadn’t. That changed when I got to the track where he’d won ten times, the all-time record. It really changed by the end of Sunday’s race. We won.

  Like Daytona, this win did a lot. It finally got me back in Victory Lane at that track for the first time in eleven years. That got the fans off Greg’s back, at least for a little bit. But it also finally allowed me to let go of what I’d done there one year earlier, the day I’d lifted and felt so guilty about it. Anyone who was there this time around and saw me lead the race five different times—not to mention the way I dictated the pace and altered everyone else’s decision-making—there was no way anyone who saw that was still going to point to what I did in 2014 and say I’d lost my guts.

  After the race, I started reminiscing again. “When we won today, it made me think about my dad’s birthday, how much I miss him, and how much he meant to me and so many more people. I can’t even think about the number of folks that he had a relationship with, and all his fans out there who really enjoyed seeing him compete here.”

  Just two months later, we won the Firecracker 400 at Daytona from the pole position. We totally dominated. I’d swept the 2015 Daytona races, and this win came just two weeks after I’d asked Amy to marry me. I did it in Germany while we were there with Kelley and her husband, L.W., doing some genealogical research on the Earnhardt family. I proposed in a Lutheran church that my family attended three hundred years ago.

  It was a great summer. We started the postseason ranked fifth in the standings. My first three seasons after I joined Hendrick Motorsports, I felt like we were always playing catch-up. Now, for the fourth straight year we hit September feeling like legit title contenders. Unfortunately, after the very first practice session of the very first race of that postseason, I had my notes app back open. And it would stay open all fall.

  Saturday, September 19, 2015

  Chicagoland Speedway

  On paper, Chicagoland looks like Kansas or Charlotte or Texas, any of the other one-and-a-half-mile intermediate tracks we run. But the term fans like to use—cookie cutter—that’s not really accurate. Every track has its own personality and quirks, good and bad.

  Chicagoland is bumpy. There’s one big bump right in the bottom racing groove, and it is torture. In an effort to keep our cars glued to the ground, we run them really low in the front. Beneath the nose of each racecar there’s also an aerodynamic wing—a scoop, really—that looks like a shelf. That’s the splitter. If you’re a longtime fan of mine, then you know that Mr. Splitter and me, we aren’t friends. That was especially true at Chicago, where that low car with that splitter would hit that bump, and it was just like BANG. It was really jarring.

  First practice. Had a very harsh ride. Bump into Turn One was a drop for the whole car. Bumps into Turns 3/4 are mainly splitter in the middle and right side headlight. Made me feel drugged, foggy, drunk, sleepy. Couldn’t “wake up” and “clear up.” Gave me a slight tight headache. Time 1:30.

  Every time I hit that bump my head would bang against the headrest of my seat. It felt like a big drop before whamming into the ground and into my head, a drop that sat right in the racing lane that was the fastest line around the racetrack, waiting for me every single time I came through that turn. Wham. Wham. Wham. On Sunday in the race that could happen as many as four hundred times.

  My brain at this point of the season and my life was still fragile. Subjecting it to a repeated, carbon-copied pounding all day, all I could think was that it was going to be no different than an NFL lineman hitting his head the same way on every snap in the trenches.

  Got out of car took a Goody’s shot and felt this way for around one hour. Started clearing up after that hour. 90 minutes after still not totally clear. Standing up and walking helps.

  Ran second practice. At 5 pm I felt 95%.

  I told Greg that either he had to figure out a way to improve the ride quality of the racecar or he’d have to watch me steer around that bump all day on Sunday. He and the team worked with me, and we finished a respectable twelfth.

  Sunday, October 11, 2015

  Charlotte Motor Speedway

  We came to our hometown track at Charlotte as one of the twelve drivers all tied for the points lead, thanks to NASCAR’s new playoff-style bracket postseason format. But by day’s end we were already essentially eliminated from contention because we had a brutally awful race. I hit the wall three different times. The hardest came when there was oil on the track that hadn’t been cleaned up, and I pancaked the right side of the car. Again, it looked like nothing. My notes tell you otherwise.

  Hit oil and slammed wall. Instant headache. Felt lazy and 1 beer drunk rest of the day.

  Monday-Thursday felt ok but have slight pressure headache. No eye issues. Could fumble some speech and mind was very forgetful. Don’t consider this one as serious as some I had in 2014.

  For the first time, I felt as bad late in the week as I did in the days immediately following the race.

  Thursday I felt hungover and frustrated all day. Drank some water and really improved.

  Friday I seemed to wake up really slow and feel groggy and not sharp. Gets better after a few hours. Weird how I feel worse Thursday and Friday as compared to earlier in the week. I did drink Sunday and Tuesday pretty heavily. May be dehydration. Water does seem to clear up the cobwebs a bit but I still feel nervous about my situation and not sure if I’m really sharp. The three different hits into the wall that Sunday were 20, 13, and 23 Gs.

  I had gone to the team and NASCAR and we’d gotten the black box numbers from my three hits at Charlotte, what all looked like glancing blows. None had crossed over into what is considered the threshold of a big hit, that 25-plus G load. None of them had come anywhere close to my big 40-G hit at Kansas in 2012; only one was even slightly more than halfway there. But the fact that my symptoms were still lingering as we arrived at the next track on the schedule—that scared me. It scared me bad. That nervousness I’d felt early in the season—that I couldn’t get clear of any wreck without finding myself in the middle of yet another—that was worse now. I was wrecking more often, and even when I wasn’t, I was constantly worried about when the next hit was comin
g and how it might make me feel. I never felt healed. I felt vulnerable.

  Sunday, October 18, 2015

  Kansas Speedway

  That stress is reflected in the big-picture tone of my next set of notes. My anxiety was back in a big way. It wasn’t helped by being at this particular track where we were racing next.

  Felt good Friday after qualifying.

  Saturday was feeling great all day.

  Wake up in the mornings with slight headache that’s similar to a sinus pressure, this goes away after an hour of being up and active. Every morning has been a real challenge with worry about my future, how I’m changed now, how much of myself will I never recover.

  Sunday morning thought a week after Charlotte: There’s a lot of things I do today that frustrate me. Mid-sentence, not being able to find the words to finish. Remembering simple things, short-term memory being the most common. Some of it I’m sure is just stress, getting old, and so on. But when in vocal conversation I choose the wrong word or can’t find the word to complete my thought, that makes me so sad and scared.

  We finished twenty-first at Kansas, one lap down. I was happy just to get out of there. Now we were headed to the place where I had won just six months earlier but had also experienced so much anxiety the year before that.

  Sunday, October 25, 2015

  Talladega Superspeedway

  I had no idea at the time, but these feelings of pressure—not the emotional pressure, the physical sinus pressure—that I was beginning to record in my notes, they were a sneak preview of what was to come in the not-too-distant future.

  Two weeks after Charlotte, Friday at Dega. Really felt laggy and slow. Slightly wobbly even. I don’t know why this is, haven’t felt this all week. Have a ton of anxiety about several media things I’m doing this entire weekend. But parts of the day I’m ok, but other times I feel kinda drunk. I’m real nervous my speech and mannerisms are going to reflect this so I’m really anxious in company. I have had moments of soreness in my sinus areas, around my eyes, behind my nose on one side or the other. High cheeks area near my temple beside my eyes. Not really my forehead though.

  Even still, I finished second in the race at Talladega.

  We went to Martinsville the following weekend, and again my late-week anxiety took over. I barely slept the Thursday night before going to the racetrack. During Friday’s practice I hit a big bump that rattled my head similar to what happened at Chicagoland, but not nearly as much of an event. My nighttime headaches continued all weekend as did that nagging sinus pressure, though now it had extended into my jaw hinge and temples. Another practice jolt caused my head to smack back and forth between the headrests of my seat. It took a half-hour after practice to shake those cobwebs. But again, I finished near the front, this time a solid fourth-place run.

  In fact, we finished the season with four top-six finishes over the last five races and even won the season’s next-to-last race, at Phoenix International Raceway. Our twelfth-place finish in the final championship standings was disappointing, but we’d posted three wins, and in my sixteenth full-time season, I had matched my career bests with sixteen top-five finishes and twenty-two top tens. On top of that, Amy and I were planning a wedding, now one year away.

  I had every reason to spend that winter feeling great about where I was, personally and professionally. However, I was eaten up inside. I’d spent the 2014 and ’15 seasons keeping secrets about my health. Again. And I felt very guilty about that. I was a hypocrite and I knew it. I think, deep down, that’s why I was keeping those notes on my phone. As I told you earlier, I realize now that I was basically leaving a trail of bread crumbs for someone to find in case something really bad happened to me, so people could see what I had been fighting, even if it was after the fact. It was also just a personal sounding board. I had to get it off my chest somewhere and tell someone, even if that someone was an iPhone app.

  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.

  But time was running out on my charade. The 2016 season had arrived. My secrets were about to be exposed to the world.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE LOST SEASON

  2016

  I get asked all the time now, when was it that I really, seriously started to think about retirement? It was probably earlier and more often than you think.

  In 2009 and ’10 I had some pretty low moments. Those were my second and third seasons with Hendrick Motorsports. I’d left the company my father founded after twelve years—though it wasn’t really that company anymore—to drive for the most powerful organization in NASCAR, and I ran pretty terrible. It wasn’t that we didn’t win races; we weren’t even finishing in the top twenty in the championship standings. I felt like I was letting so many people down, from Rick to my sponsors that were spending millions to support me to my fan base. Privately, I was telling my closest friends and family that I still loved racing, but I wasn’t having any fun. Racing is supposed to be fun, right? So why would I keep being miserable? At the lowest points during that stretch, sometimes I would daydream of just cashing out and going to live in the Caribbean or something. I had plenty of money. I could just go be a beach bum.

  But the same reasons that I felt so miserable were also why I wouldn’t let myself quit. I didn’t want to let down the people who believed in me, and I certainly didn’t want to turn my back on the people who depended on me to make their living. Between Hendrick Motorsports and JR Motorsports and all the companies who either sponsored us or helped us out in whatever we did, I couldn’t just cut and run on them. Same goes for Junior Nation, the people who wear my name and face on their clothes or have big 88s and 8s tattooed on their bodies. The people on my team and supporting my team—they are the reasons I stuck it out during the lean times.

  I also wanted to make sure my legacy wasn’t just this huge letdown. “Well, Dale Junior, he was pretty good at the start of his career, but then he just sucked and then he disappeared.” We fixed that. From 2011 through ’15, our performance was finally where it should have been. We made the postseason field every year. We led the points standings six different times. We had twenty-plus top-ten finishes four times. We won seven races in ’14–’15, despite switching crew chiefs in the middle of it. And we accomplished all of that even while I silently suffered through big chunks of ’12, ’14, and ’15.

  Still, throughout 2015, during conversations at my office with Kelley and Mike Davis, I tried to drop hints that we needed to start thinking about an exit strategy. Kelley, as you know, runs every aspect of my businesses. Mike has worked with me for more than a decade, first as a public relations rep and now overseeing our brand management at JRM and running all our media efforts. He’s the guy you hear as my cohost on our Dale Jr. Download podcast every week. He’s a great friend and a real confidant.

  I’d just blurt out to them, “Hey, y’all, I want to quit.” But I don’t think it ever really computed with them how serious I was. I suppose the timing made no sense to them. I was finally running well in my Cup car on Sundays, and our JR Motorsports teams were doing well on Saturdays in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. More importantly, they thought I was totally healthy, more than three years removed from my 2012 injuries. They had no idea what I was going through every time I got hit on the track. Because of that, even when I would try to be as blunt as I could and say, “Listen, I need to quit before something really bad happens to me!” they would just look at me like, “Well, what bad is going to happen? Why are you thinking this way?”

  I couldn’t make them understand my sense of urgency because I was never being fully honest with them. I never told them how bad I really felt. I never showed them the notes I had bee
n taking. In fact, I think the first time my sister will have seen my notes about my symptoms is right now, at the same time as y’all, when she reads this book. I think they probably assumed I was tired or hungover or I was just being a whiny racecar driver.

  At home, Amy knew I was thinking about quitting driving because we talked about it a lot. She was eager for me to put a date on it and kind of officially start the countdown, but not because she wanted me to stop racing. She was worried about me. I hadn’t shared my notes with her, either. Not yet anyway. But even as hard as I tried to hide it, she could tell when I wasn’t feeling right after a race. Not all the time, but enough to be worried about her soon-to-be husband.

  Even with all of that weighing on my mind, we hit the 2016 season with a lot of optimism. My teammate Jimmie Johnson was once again considered the favorite to win the Cup title, looking to tie my father’s record of seven. Jeff Gordon had retired at the end of 2015, nearly winning the championship in his final race. I was envious of how he’d gone out and thought maybe I could do the same. His replacement was Chase Elliott, son of NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, one of my dad’s biggest rivals. Chase had driven for us and won an Xfinity Series championship. Kasey Kahne was back too. My crew was fully intact, led by Greg Ives, and there was no reason to believe that we wouldn’t continue our momentum from the previous five seasons.

  Early in the season-opening Daytona 500 my car broke loose as I was trying to work the draft through Turn 4, and I ended up sliding into the massive wall that leads to the entrance to pit road. I went straight in, nose-first, and bent that whole nose in flat, like a boxer had punched my Chevy with a straight jab. I made no notes that day or that week. Okay, I thought, that’s good. Health-wise, I was already ahead of where I’d left off in 2015.