Aric Almirola: "I’m so ready to get back in a race car"

Almirola crushed his T5 vertebra in a vicious wreck at Kansas Speedway on May 13. Two weeks ago, doctors cleared the driver of the No. 43 Richard Petty Motorsports Ford to test the car.

But first, Almirola will have a confirmation test at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Tuesday to ensure his body is healed and ready to race again.

“I’m ready, so ready to get back in a race car,” Almirola told Motorsport.com before last Saturday's Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Speedway. “I really am ready to get back in a race car. I miss it so much. After doing it for five-and-a-half years and sort of going through the motions and the grind, it sort of starts becoming routine.

“You don’t realize how much you love it until it gets taken away from you. These last seven weeks have been tough, and I’ve been dying to get back in a race car.”

Drew Blickensderfer told motorsport.com he’ll run a few initial laps to get the driver up to speed and make sure Almirola is comfortable. He’ll put him a 30-lap run then practice dropping the jack during a mock pit stop to see how Almirola’s back holds up.

Racing without pain

Although Almirola can sit in a simulator or in a car at a shaker rig, nothing duplicates the actual on-track experience.

“The biggest thing for me is just getting in the race car and having the doctors make sure I don’t have any pain,” Almirola said. “When the car slams down into the banking and sort of loads up, there’s a lot of load that goes through your spine through that vertical compression — that’s sort of the same compression that injured my spine.

“I just have to make sure that when I go through that, that I don’t have any pain when that load goes up through my spine.”

Richard Petty Motorsports downsized to one car — the No. 43 Ford — for 2017. The move paid off. Prior to Almirola’s injury, he finished ninth at Richmond International Raceway and fourth at Talladega Superspeedway. The team was climbing in the standings prior to failing the post-race wheel steer on the LIS. The team lost 35 points for the infraction — and its crew chief Blickensderfer for three races.

The following week, Almirola barely missed advancing to the final round of qualifying at Kansas Speedway. He started 13th. With 68 laps remaining in the race, he slid through oil and into the wreck involving Danica Patrick and Joey Logano. As soon as he was able to, Almirola began the rehabbing process.

Focused only on coming back

Although Almirola’s contract is up at season’s end, it hasn't been at the forefront of his priorities.

“Right now, I’m just focused on healing and getting back into the race car,” Almirola said. “I honestly haven’t put a lot of thought or emphasis on that. I know I’m taking a page out of (Matt) Kenseth’s book, but I really haven’t put a lot of focus on that.

“My focus has been on getting my back to heal and getting back in a race car. At that point, it’s time to go back and get racing and get back to the competitive level we were pre-accident. Before I wrecked at Kansas, we came off of two top 10s and were really running strong. So I really want to get back in the car and hit the ground running.”

Almirola, who is 32nd in the Cup standings and eight points out of 30th, hasn’t given up on making the playoffs, should he receive a medical waiver from NASCAR. If he is cleared to race this weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, he'll have eight races to qualify for the 16-car postseason field. Is there one track Almirola favors between now and the beginning of the playoffs at Chicagoland in September?

“I can’t think of one off the top of my head where I can say, ‘Yes, we can go there and win,’ but we have had really good runs at Richmond in the past,” Almirola said. “I know in 2015, when we just missed the Chase by a few points and finished fourth, I lined up third and felt like I had a shot to win the race.

“So, I think Richmond is a really good track for us. We ran ninth there in the spring, so that could be one. We notoriously run well at Bristol. We didn’t run well there in the spring race but overall we’ve been well there over the last few years. I think those are the two tracks that stick out in my mind. We still have work to do on our mile-and-a-half program. We have to get more speed in our cars in order to run up front.

“I’ve learned to never say never. I don’t think Chris Buescher thought he was going to win Pocono — and then the fog rolled in. Anything is possible. That’s why we line up every weekend and go race.”