Racing to the Finish Page 9

  Over the next eight races we never finished lower than fourteenth, with three runner-up finishes, and were ranked solidly in the top ten as we hit the middle of spring.

  Sunday, May 1, 2016

  Talladega Superspeedway

  This was a bad day nearly from the start. Only fifty laps into the race, I had an aerodynamic deal like at Daytona. I tried to make a move but ended up looping it, this time on the backstretch. While I was sideways I caught hits from a couple of cars, including my teammate Kahne, but there weren’t any bad hits until near the end of the race. I had my repaired Chevy back on the racetrack and riding in the high lane as we entered the first turn. But Carl Edwards, also back out there with a repaired ride, broke a suspension part, and his car suddenly snapped a hard right toward the wall—right in front of me. I hit him so hard it nearly ripped the front quarter of my car clean off. Instantly, the old symptoms were back, as I recorded in my notes:

  Carl’s suspension broke and we hit the wall hard. Car rolls to the grass and I exit quickly. I immediately felt like my bell was rung. Don’t remember what I did with my gloves. Lost them. Small headache. Drunk, one beer feeling. Eye movement seemed sharp and ok.

  On flight home I am staring off, deep in thought. Worrying a lot. Went home and rested. Did not sleep well the night before the race so a nap made me feel much better.

  On Monday morning, I noticed a new symptom. I had significant pain in my sinuses. This was way more than the sinus pressure I had felt before. It was a feeling that would end up dogging me all spring and summer.

  Monday-Tuesday I felt 95% better. Still some aches. Sinus areas aching. Eyeball sore. Behind the eyes sore. Temples sore. Some pains coming and going around the skull. Some moments (an hour here and there) of getting very tired and mentally exhausted followed by moments of feeling good and clear.

  I jumped in my street car and drove to a studio to record some radio ads for Goodyear.

  Driving a car, I felt lazy mentally. I didn’t have any real moment of feeling “off” till I had to read some liners for Goodyear. I struggled with picking up the next word of each sentence as well as I usually do. This scared me. That was the only red flag most of the week.

  I can read articles well. I can plug into a conversation fine. I feel really close to 100%, like 95%, but that 5% is still not there come Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning wake up 7:30 with slight headache or pressure and a light beer buzz. My disposition mainly has been happy. No mood issues.

  Here I am going through my personal systems check again. Was I triggered emotionally as I had been at Talladega in 2012? No. But was the anxiety returning, my worry about the bigger picture of what I was experiencing? Yes.

  I felt like this hit was a hard one and that after the wreck I was concerned that this concussion was worse than most I’ve felt in the last 2 years. But honestly, it’s been no more severe. Oddly, similar to Charlotte 2015, I feel like Wednesday I didn’t make any gains from Tuesday or Monday. Could Thursday and Friday be worse with anxiety and stress increased?

  Thursday. Feeling fine mentally. Still carrying some headache and pain. It’s more in my forehead and temples and sides than the sinus pains of a day or two ago.

  Friday wake up with small headache. But feel really good overall.

  We got through the next race at Kansas Speedway without incident, finishing fifteenth. At our next stop I wasn’t so lucky.

  Sunday, May 15, 2016

  Dover International Speedway

  Dover is the track you’d get if you took the concrete cereal bowl short track of Bristol and put it on a stretching rack. It’s just as crazy and just as hard to stay out of trouble, only it’s a full mile long instead of Bristol’s half-mile. With forty-six laps remaining, Jimmie Johnson was the leader, but he couldn’t get up to speed on a restart. He stalled and puttered along as everyone was jumping into the gas, so the field had to just as quickly jump into the brakes. It was a total mess. Cars started spinning and wrecking everywhere, right at the entrance to the first turn.

  I had restarted back in the pack. When all the wrecking started sliding down the banking, I hit the top lane and, amazingly, was in the clear. I’d made it all the way into Turn 1, but Casey Mears came out of nowhere, up all the way from the bottom of the track, blasting up the banking and hitting my left front corner so hard it lifted us both off the ground. The blow pushed my car into the wall for another hard lick, this time to the right front corner. Bang and BANG. My head smacked back and forth between the headrests of my seat. As I slid into the little patch of grass at the bottom of the turn, I was panicked, but as my notes tell you, I was relatively okay after my third hard hit in three weeks.

  Got my head banged around in a crash on the frontstretch. It was on a restart and we were nowhere near full speed. Still was enough to shake me up a little. Not real bad though. No headache or pressure. Very very light symptoms if any. No issues during the week. Zero.

  The next week was a fourteenth-place finish in the 600-miler at Charlotte, followed by a second place run at Pocono. We led late in the day, but I just didn’t have anything for Kurt Busch. After the race I told the media that I was bummed about having no wins on the year, but that we’d finished second four times now in fourteen races and that victory felt inevitable. A reporter pointed out that I now had twenty-six career Cup Series wins, but thirty-two second-place finishes. I laughed and said something about that showing how tough this sport really is. “Just imagine if we could get even just half of those races back and figure out how to move up just one spot. Man, I’d already be in the Hall of Fame!” Then I promised that I would be adding to both of those totals, and soon.

  The reality was that I was never going to be that close to winning a race again. The dominoes that ultimately pushed me away from the front of the pack started falling the very next weekend.

  Sunday, June 12, 2016

  Michigan International Speedway

  Michigan is a place that has always been very good to me. During the struggles of my first few years at Hendrick Motorsports, Michigan was the racetrack where we twice snapped years-long winless streaks. But it can also be treacherous. It’s a two-mile oval with big, sweeping turns that make it super fast. Some of NASCAR’s more infamous crashes have happened there. I told you about Dad’s broken bones from 1994 that he kept secret while fighting for a championship. That same year, while racing my dad for the title, Ernie Irvan suffered critical head injuries that kept him out of the car for more than a year. Ernie worked hard, came back, and won races again. But in 1999, on the exact fifth anniversary of the crash that nearly killed him, he wrecked again at Michigan, this time in an Xfinity (then Busch) Series practice session. Two weeks later Ernie announced his retirement.

  None of that ever caused me to dislike the racetrack at Michigan. Danger is part of the job. Danger showed up for me on lap 62 of the 200-lap race, as I was running three-wide, exiting Turn 2 onto the backstretch. I was running twentieth but jetting through the field and had just cut in between A. J. Allmendinger to my outside and Chris Buescher to my inside. Buescher’s car drifted up the track, just slightly, and grazed the left rear corner of my car. If it’d happened a fraction of a second later, I would have already cleared him and been gone. Instead, the tap was enough to smack the rear of my car into the nose of Allmendinger’s. I waggled and slapped the wall with the right rear corner of my Chevy and dot-dot-dotted my way down the backstretch wall. Again, it looked like nothing and should have been nothing. My black box recorded it at only 17 Gs. But this was my fourth crash in six weeks. It was far from nothing.

  Slammed wall with right side off turn 2 after contact with the 34. Felt fine driving car back. Felt dinged just a little out of the car when talking to the team. Not buzzed or drunk. Just a visual and mental ding. Got to bus and felt same. Driving to airport and in plane and taxis I felt some dizziness but I feel aware, sharp, not spaced out or drunk.

  We were entering an off weekend, which is rare in the Cup Series schedu
le, so we’d planned a trip back to Germany with some friends. We basically went straight to Europe from the race. That forced me to work overtime, hiding how I felt not only from Amy but our friends too.

  Just a wobbly balance issue more than anything. It was certainly a new feeling compared to old similar slight concussions. They are usually a drunk buzz feeling. This is a balance feeling accompanied with lazy and sleepy feeling.

  Go back and look through all of the symptoms I’d experienced up to this point. I’d had headaches, I’d felt “unplugged” from my surroundings, and I’d had a ton of anxiety. Lately, I’d suffered from sinus pressures. But balance problems? These weren’t little flashes of wobbliness, but a consistent feeling of imbalance. I hadn’t been here before.

  I felt like I did a good job preparing for the hit at Michigan and that hopefully lessened the potential damage. I think this should clear in 12 to 24 hours.

  Later Sunday night. I feel slightly off, not 100% sharp with my eyes on TV but otherwise no issues there. Right eye is sore. Socket and area around eye is sore. Lower temple and area in front of ear is sore. I feel angry for no reason. Doing well biting my tongue but have zero patience.

  There was that irritation again.

  Still feeling like my issues are balance and mechanical, like buckling a belt or tying a shoe. Even though I feel symptoms it’s nothing like usual crashes. Symptoms are different and not as severe.

  This was a feeling that was new but was about to become a significant part of my life. Trying to do the simple things that you do every single day but feeling like your brain can’t talk to your hands or your feet. Tying my shoes, that always felt like the most glaring problem. I’ve got my laces in my hands and my brain is like, C’mon, you know what to do, but my fingers aren’t getting the message. It’s like your feet and your shoes are across the room and you can’t get to them.

  Monday morning, wake up with aches in my head. Aches are all over and moving from one part of the skull and head to another. Feeling pretty sharp just feel aches and some sadness/emotions.

  While we were in Germany, Amy and our friends all noticed that I was disconnected a lot of the time. We had plenty of fun, but I went to bed before everyone else, which is unusual for me. They didn’t think it was any indicator of a bigger problem, especially Amy. I had been examined in the infield care center at Michigan and given the okay. I was always worn out after a race, so it wasn’t unusual that I’d look like I was dragging a bit, especially when you threw in the jet lag of a trip to Europe on top of that. We also drank more than our share of German beer. The beds were hard. I supposed all of that helped me mask how I really felt, which was scared. I had new symptoms in the balance issues added to the return of my old symptoms.

  We returned home the next week and, in my notes, I think you can see that the worrying was starting to wear on me.

  Rest of the week was good.

  Monday and Tuesday a full week later I’m dealing with headaches around my eye sockets. My eyeballs hurt. Maybe allergies? Constant all day.

  Sleepy. Lazy.

  Sad feeling.

  Sad? That’s not me. I’m a lot of things, but sad isn’t one of them. These symptoms made no sense to me and were starting to take a toll because they were so different than anything I had experienced before. In 2012 it felt like someone walking into the room and hitting me upside the head with a baseball bat. This time around, it came on like a slow burn. That’s why I thought that maybe it wasn’t concussion-related. It really did feel like allergies. Sinus and eye pressure, nagging headaches, and burning and itchy eyes. When I thought back on the crashes I’d had that season, there was no big moment I could connect it back to. The Michigan crash had been a couple of weeks ago, and it wasn’t anything special. It was a slap. A broadside wall ding that happens at least a couple of times to somebody in every race.

  That’s how I reasoned my way through these new feelings, writing them off as allergies. That had to be it. I called Jimmie Johnson, who has always had bad allergies, and he told me, yeah, it sounded like what he was always dealing with in the springtime. I went to my family doctor in Mooresville, North Carolina. He wasn’t there, so I saw another guy in the same office, and he agreed with me. I got some allergy medicine and headed west for our first race since Michigan, at the Sonoma Raceway road course in Northern California.

  I had a good time, relieved to be back at the track. Behind the wheel of my racecar had become the place where I felt the most normal. The focus it takes, especially the lefts and rights of a road course, kept my mind from constantly analyzing myself. I remember being very conscious of the curbs that are located all over the track, these raised bumpy concrete strips that line most of the course’s ten turns. I didn’t want to let my tires accidentally wander too far off the asphalt, hit one of those curbs, jar my head, and once again aggravate my symptoms. The day went smoothly, and we finished eleventh.

  So the cycle I had been living for years was still intact. Hit something in a race, feel bad for a little bit, be okay by the next race, and cross your fingers that it doesn’t happen again. Sometimes the timeline might change a little, the symptoms might last fewer days or they might last a couple of days longer, and the symptoms themselves might change from time to time. Sometimes I would reason my way into some other cause, be it a hangover or jet lag or allergies. But the basic cycle of the experience, it was always the same. I’d be okay by the next weekend, so let’s go racing! It wasn’t getting any better, but it also wasn’t getting a whole lot worse, so I figured that even if it was head-related I must not be doing any real long-term damage.

  At the same time, I continued to have my occasional “I think I want to quit” conversations with Kelley and Mike, but nothing would come of it. We’d just move on. We had stuff to do. I had to get to Daytona, where I was the defending champion of the Fourth of July 400-miler.

  CHAPTER 6

  HARD TRUTHS

  Saturday, July 6, 2016

  Daytona International Speedway

  From the minute I first hit the racetrack for practice, I knew something wasn’t right. I’m reluctant to use the word easy to describe racing at Daytona, but that place always came easy to me. I would have this constant awareness, knowing where everyone is around me at all times and just instinctively knowing who is going to do what and what’s coming next. I can be sitting in a pack of cars and just instantly sense things like, Okay, the outside line is about to be on the move, and pull it up there just in time to catch that train and go to the front. When I’m in the draft, I’m calling the shots. Everyone knows it too.

  But when practice started, I immediately realized that those abilities were gone. If I made a move, it was a beat too late. If I sensed a guy was going to make a move, by the time I processed that thought, he had already made it and was gone. He had dusted me. It was like everything was moving at seven-eighths’ speed.

  Racecar drivers don’t do anything at seven-eighths’ speed. Perhaps I had experienced this symptom before, but never at the racetrack, certainly never in the car.

  Another symptom was returning now too. That constant irritation was creeping back. I could feel it. It was like that day at Talladega in 2012, the day of my “bloodthirsty” rant, when I suddenly wasn’t able to control my emotions or put a filter between my mind and my mouth. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

  When I returned to my motorcoach, Amy informed me that Rick Hendrick wanted me to come by his bus for a chat. I knew what he wanted to talk about. My contract with Hendrick Motorsports was up at the end of 2017, the next season. Rick, eager to keep our sponsors happy, wanted us to start talking about getting an extension signed before it became a hot topic in the media. Amy knew I was having a bad day, and she made me promise to keep a cool head. I told her that I would.

  Instead, I totally blew up. Rick thought we were going to talk about another three-year deal, but instead what he got was a rant from me, telling him I was tired of driving racecars. I yelled it. I
told him I was done, that I hated it. I wasn’t having any fun on the racetrack or really anywhere, so I was done. I could leave that bus right then and there and walk out of the track and never come back and that would be fine with me. For accuracy, take those last five sentences and cram a bunch of cuss words into them.

  I know he wasn’t expecting me to say what I said. Heck, I wasn’t expecting to say what I said, either. But my filter was gone. I felt awful. That was it. While I carried on it was like all of a sudden I realized the truth. I had felt awful for months and my brain might be hurt and my future might be in jeopardy and I’d been keeping this a secret from everyone and now I couldn’t even get around Daytona worth a flip—and all of that just boiled up right there, right in front of poor Rick.

  I wasn’t mad at Rick. I didn’t hate racing, either. I was just angry. Rick and racing, they just happened to be what was sitting there in my way when that anger finally blew up. What I didn’t realize—and neither did Rick—was how sick I really was.

  You know how when you get the flu, you don’t have time for anyone or anything? You just want to lay there. “Leave me alone; I’m sick.” Well, that’s how I felt. Because I was sick, and I had been sick for a long time.

  This time, though, I felt sick at the track and in my racecar. I guess that’s what it finally took for it all to become real to me. As odd as this might sound for you, having just read all of my stories and notes from all the times I didn’t feel right over all those months and years, that weekend at Daytona was the first time I really came to grips with the fact that Dale, something is really wrong with you.