Two months after crash, Fittipaldi feels great
IndyCar driver eager to race at Mid-Ohio course
INDIANAPOLIS — You can almost hear the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course fans whispering now:
Who’s that kid with a cane, and why is he hobbling toward an Indy car?
A fair question.
IndyCar fans haven’t seen Dale Coyne Racing driver Pietro Fittipaldi,
22, on track for a race since early April at ISM Raceway near Phoenix, and MidOhio fans might just see him clutching a cane this weekend because doctors only just recently cleared him to walk.
The grandson of two-time Formula One world champion and two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Emerson Fittipaldi is still recovering from a gruesome crash during an early May qualifying session at the World Endurance Championship’s 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium that left Fittipaldi with fractures in both legs. The accident and surgery cost him his Indy 500 debut and put his promising career on pause.
But after two months of nonstop rehabilitation, Fittipaldi is ready to climb back into the cockpit and resume his rightful place as one of the Verizon IndyCar Series’ most tantalizing young talents. On Sunday, he’ll have that chance as he pilots the No. 19 DCR car at the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio
(3:30 p.m. ET, CNBC).
There will still be pain Sunday, he admitted shortly after his return during July 17 testing at the Lexington, Ohio, road course. There will be discomfort, but nothing that compares to the months spent away from the one place he wants to be — inside an Indy car.
“The cane makes me feel like an old man,” Fittipaldi told “The Indianapolis Star” with a laugh. “But in the car, I feel great, and to me, that’s all that matters.”
After his surgery in Belgium, Fittipaldi flew back to the USA to begin the early torments of rehab. The young Brazilian-American described the massages of his bruised and swollen legs as among the most agonizing experiences of his life.
“That was just a week after surgery,” Fittipaldi said. “That was painful. So painful. They gave me this little rubber ball to squeeze while they were doing it, and it was so painful. We did that for about an hour or hour-and-a-half every day. That first week when everything was bruised and swollen, that was when it was the worst.”
And that was only half of Fittipaldi’s battle. The other half was the mental hurdles he had to clear after suffering the first serious injury of his life.
Among the most torturous was not only being in Indianapolis during the wild month of May but being at Indianapolis Motor Speedway every day. Fittipaldi chose to live in a motor home on the IMS infield, mostly to work with Dr. Terry Trammell, an IndyCar safety consultant and longtime member of the AMR INDYCAR Safety Team. That meant every day he woke up in a place that should have been home to the biggest race of his young life but was instead simply an oversized rehab facility.
That was difficult, Fittipaldi confessed. But he channeled that frustration into motivation. Every time he saw cars on track, and every time the roar of an engine woke him in the morning, he used it as motivation.
“Hearing those cars just inspired me to get up and go to rehab,” Fittipaldi said.
He spent more than six weeks living in a motor home at IMS and attending daily physical therapy sessions. Along with those sessions, he also frequently swam in Trammell’s personal pool as part of his rehabilitation and made daily pit stops at PitFit Training, the nowfamous northwest side Indianapolis workout facility that caters almost exclusively to auto racing drivers.
PitFit’s trainers crafted a unique program for Fittipaldi that allowed him to strengthen his upper body and maintain his cardiovascular fitness without the use of his legs.
Alex Wanee, performance director at PitFit and the trainer who worked most closely with Fittipaldi, said he was floored not only by the driver’s work ethic but by his unyielding optimism.
“The first impression for me was him coming in during the middle of May and having to miss out on what would have arguably been the biggest race of his life,” Wanee said. “But there was no negativity. He was all about, ‘How can I get back in car as fast as possible?’ Within five minutes of working with the kid, I knew he was going to surpass everyone’s expectations and recover way ahead of the timeline.”
Even on the days when his doctors didn’t give him good news about his injuries and recovery, Wanee said, Fittpaldi would arrive at PitFit that much more determined to beat the odds.
“He was doing every little thing he could do to get himself prepared for this coming weekend,” Wanee told “The Indianapolis Star” on Tuesday. “Our attitude from Day 1 was that while his legs won’t be back to 100 percent, the rest of him was going to be in the best racing condition of his life.”
While it remains to be seen what kind of condition Fittipaldi will be in after Sunday’s race, if the Mid-Ohio test was any indication, he’ll be just fine.
The race consists of 90 laps, and Fittipaldi turned just under 100 at the test. He confessed to being “worn out” physically at the end but mentally he was as strong as ever.
“The first time I got out of the pits and was on track, I don’t know if you can put this in your story, I was (expletive) yeah! I was so happy to be back,” Fittpaldi laughed. “It’s been two months, and there’s that mental barrier. And you keep thinking, ‘When can I get back?’
“Working everyday and going through that painful physical therapy, to be finally back doing what I love, it was just amazing. There’s no fear there. I’m just happy to be back, and I can’t wait to show what I can do at Mid-Ohio.”