Why Dale Earnhardt Jr. Was ‘Relieved’ To Retire
Dale Jr. is opening up about the scary health crisis that lead to his retirement in 2017. Earnhardt Jr. said he was “relieved” to announce his retirement, “I knew that I was putting myself in real danger by continuing that career long term.”
Dale Jr. was on Good Morning America to promote his new book, Racing to the Finish: My Story, where he talked about the symptoms he had when he suffered a head injury in 2012. “I got injured in 2012,” he explained. “That wasn’t the first concussion but that was the most serious one and I went and I got help.”
“If I had a crash and had symptoms — I would write a diary and, you know, how I felt after the wreck, how I felt that night, all the next day for several days and so that helped me kind of understand the progress of the symptoms and if they were getting better or worse,” he said. “And I started making a habit of this and ended up accumulating about 12 concussions in a very short period of time. It got to a point to where I couldn’t stand up.”
“It got to a point to where I couldn’t stand up, I couldn’t turn my head without falling over and my eyes were not working right focusing and tracking an object of a bird flying across the sky,” he explained. “It got so bad, so I finally said,’ I can’t drive, I can’t operate a racecar much less drive to the grocery store.’”
