Driver returns to racing after brain tumor
‘I was very fortunate to get it out when I did,’ Matt Tifft says.
The symptoms were the ones that every athlete has become familiar with.
Matt Tifft had migrainelevel headaches and sensitivity to bright light. He was irritable and not quite feeling like himself.
He knew what was going on. He had a concussion. It made sense; Tifft had been involved in a crash during a NASCAR Xfinity Series race in June 2016.
Since he was going to see a doctor about a disc issue in his back, Tifft figured he might as well have his head checked also.
And that’s when the then 19-year-old had his world crash in on him.
Tifft didn’t have a concussion. The issues he was going through were being caused by a low-grade glioma — a tumor in his brain.
The prognosis for recovery from his surgery on July 21, 2016, was positive, but there is no such thing as simple brain surgery.
“Benign is just an opposite word from malignant,” Tifft, now 21, said recently. “The really scary thing was learning what it could become.
“I was very fortunate to get it out when I did. Nobody wants to have an accident, but that one probably saved my life.”
Early in his recovery, some doctors told Tifft he might never race again. That became a call to battle for the native of Ohio who started racing go-carts when he was 10.
He had to learn to do a lot of things over again, but the motor skills and reflexes that had him racing in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series at 18 and in the Xfinity series a year later had not been affected.
“Every new experience I could feel it working and rewiring the thinking process,” Tifft said. “Sometimes new stimulants for my brain would knock me off my feet.
“I never lost the driving skills, but I could feel my brain having to knock out the cobwebs.”
The steroids Tifft was on for treatment caused extreme weight gain and irritability.
He fought through and two months after surgery, he got back into a late-model car and went to a track to test himself.
“I ran like 20 laps, which, in our world, is nothing,” Tifft said. “I just needed to see that I wouldn’t get dizzy or anything like that. A week later, I ran 300 laps to simulate a race.”
Tifft then had to prove himself to racing officials.
When guys are driving at speeds approaching 200 mph, there is no room for sympathy in evaluating fitness to race.
“I had a five-day seizure study with 26 probes stuck to my head in a room that I could not leave,” said Tifft, who was cleared to return to racing Sept. 12, 2016. “I had cognizant testing to see if I could match up to military and commercial pilots. If they could clear me to fly a military plane, it was enough to let me race again.”
He got a full-time ride with Joe Gibbs Racing and finished seventh in the Xfinity standings.
This season, he moved into the No. 2 car for Richard Childress Racing.
“The first lap in that latemodel test was so special,” said Tifft, who withdrew from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte to commit to racing full time. “You do this for so long that you can take it for granted. I saw what it felt like to have it taken away. Athletes have a small window to make things happen.
“It’s back on track. Now, I’m trying to figure out how to get that first win and also what the next two or three years will be like. I don’t know what it will be like, but it’s going to be on my terms. I can dictate my own destiny.”
‘I never lost the driving skills, but I could feel my brain having to knock out the cobwebs.’