Earnhardt says his mind "feels sharp" despite nausea and balance issues

Speaking on Sunday evening for his podcast on Dirty Mo Radio, after the New Hampshire race, Earnhardt first paid tribute to his substitute driver Alex Bowman before going into details of his medical situation.

“Proud of Alex Bowman, I was kinda plugged in to what they were doing, and fun to feel a part of it anyways and a little bit of help,” said Earnhardt Jr. “I missed everybody, the drivers, the media and the fans, and being at the track, but I couldn’t ask for a better substitute in Alex.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of speculation about the kind of injuries or symptoms I’m dealing with. My mind feels real sharp, I took the impact test which measures thought process and the speed of your thought process, memory and retaining memory.

“My results matched my baseline, which made me feel confident that my brain was pretty sharp, it feels good. The symptoms that I have are balance and nausea. I’ve struggled with my balance over the past four, five days and definitely wouldn’t be able to drive a racecar at the weekend. I made the decision I had to make.

“I’ll continue to work with my doctors to continue to understand about the injury and how to treat it. They can give me a lot of exercises that retrain my brain to handle what I need to handle.”

“I hope we can get back on track soon”

Earnhardt gave no timeframe for his planned recovery, with Jeff Gordon on standby to replace him at Indianapolis this weekend if he’s not fully fit to race.

“It’s just going to take a lot of patience and, y’know, I put my health and quality of life as a top priority,” added Junior. “I always do that, so I’m going to take this slow and strictly follow the advice of my doctors. Try and learn as much as I can to be smarter and wiser.

“It’s always been a real experience going through this kinda stuff cos you learn so much. I’ve got some great doctors to learn from.

“I really appreciate the all the support I got, it’s really unnecessary but it does make me feel really good. To hear everybody wishing me well really does my heart good. This kinda thing can beat you down and get you sad but I got a lot of good people around me.

“So I hope we can get back on track soon, until then we’ll try to keep you updated on progress.”