Earnhardt’s future clear, despite clouds
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The world is no longer a blur to Dale Earnhardt Jr. despite the demands of a job that call for driving nearly 200 miles an hour occasionally.
There were times over the last year he only saw darkness, a wobbly self of the man he once was, of everything that defined his existence. All he had to do was look at the family pictures. The Earnhardts race for a living … health and happiness and death be damned.
Racing killed his daddy, bringing with it an emotional tsunami that no one should ever have to bear. Junior processed the pain with the maturity of a troubled 26-year-old kid and accessorized with a trifecta of beer, booze and babes. Come on down to “Club E,” as he called the playpen in his house, and have a few cold ones.
Life was good, even though it wasn’t.
The partying of yesteryear had nothing to do with his latest hazy situation. Multiple concussions threatened to cut short his NASCAR career and take out the most revered driver in the sport, a heavy burden to carry when you’re just trying to walk and see straight.
He once traveled from Charlotte to Raleigh with his then-fiancee Amy Reimann to pick out food for their New Year’s Eve wedding and had to put his head between his legs. The road signs and everything else kept jumping in his head, making him dizzy.
“I was scared to death that I was going to be stuck with that all my life,” he said.
He would mosey back to the track when he started to feel better, and would occasionally run into Richard Petty in the garage area. Instead of the usual handshake and hello, Petty would put his arm around him and say, “Are you taking care of yourself? Don’t do anything you don’t need to be doing.”
Fear and doubt are words that put a driver in no-man’s land. Leaving it all? He paused often, contemplating “what that side of life would be like.”
It all became overwhelming at times, and Earnhardt, 42, starting handicapping the odds of a comeback in his head after missing the last 18 races of the season because of concussion-related symptoms.
He once thought there was a 90 percent chance that he would never come back, then 50, and then lower.
He has not re-upped his expiring contract with Hendrick Motorsports, something that would be a non-issue if the uncertainty of the concussion deal wasn’t a factor. It is. A very big one. But uncertainty should not be confused with an absence of clarity. Earnhardt isn’t going to try to ride this thing out if he gets hurt again. He’ll likely be gone, too, if he wins his first Cup title: a walk-off championship and see ya.
“To come back this year, win a championship, it would be hard not to hang it up,” he said during NASCAR Media Day at Daytona International Speedway earlier this week.
“I think he’s got a lot of racing left in him,” his boss Rick Hendrick said. “If he wins a championship, I’ll try to talk him into doing it again. I’m a good salesman. Jeff Gordon told me he was retiring two or three times and I talked him into staying. I’m a car salesman.”
“I’m not going to race other than for any other reason that I want to be out there,” Earnhardt said. “I don’t think it’s very smart to do it for any other reason. There are motivations to race: Fans and camaraderie and all the great things you get to experience, but if I’m going to come back I’m going to be racing because I want to be out there.”
Earnhardt wants in, but only on his terms. He’s become a better man through all the chaos in his life, and therapy has helped considerably. His media session on Wednesday sounded like a confessional at times, without the couch.
“I don’t see any reason not to be very transparent and honest,” he said. “So far it’s not bit me in the ass yet. I feel comfortable putting it all out there. If I was younger, I might be a little more guarded about that part of me. I’m on the backside of this. What’s there to hide?”