INDIANAPOLIS — For a race car driver, there is nothing more boring than a week without a race.
When someone races as often as I do, being on the go and in a race car adds to the excitement of racing and there is little in life, if anything, that replaces that adrenaline rush.
Imagine what it was like entering a second weekend without a race while I recovered from surgery to my broken pinky finger.
During this week of recovery, I had a lot of free time on my hands, but my main goal was to focus on the recovery and rehabilitation process. Last Thursday, I went to see the physical therapist to get a splint for my pinky. It was also a chance for them to assess my progress.
He said everything was going well and taught me a few therapy exercises that I would have to start doing to help regain full functionality in my pinky.
The next day, I did all the exercises he recommended and the next morning I woke up and already felt a marked improvement in my pinky’s ability.
The exercises brought some pain, but it also taught me what to look for in what was deficient with my pinky.
Nevertheless, even though I knew it was necessary to take this break from racing in order to recover, I was still bummed about the fact that I was missing out on racing I was scheduled to do.
The weekend I had my surgery, I was supposed to race the Silver Crown car at Toledo Speedway. This past weekend I was supposed to be racing the sprint car at Berlin Raceway.
Both of those weekends had things I was looking forward to about them, so it sucks that I had to miss them.
If I’m being honest, it feels really weird to have so much time on my hands. Usually, that means I’d just be doing more of my regular hobbies, but my regular hobbies involve substantial use of my hands — especially Jiu-Jitsu, a grappling martial art that I got into in the beginning of January.
I would be doing other fun things like go-karting or trampolining but neither of those are a good idea in my current state. That pretty much just leaves competitive gaming as my only other option from my hobbies as well as making videos for social media.
I can’t wait to get back onto the race track this coming weekend when I race the Silver Crown car at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.
That should be a lot of fun but, hopefully, not so big of a plunge back into the deep end of racing, considering it’s the first time I’ll be driving any car on an oval that’s a mile or bigger.
It’s crazy to think about. The last two weekends of would-be racing would have been very helpful in taking this step, but just like in so many other instances during my development as a driver, getting thrown in the deep end has proven beneficial every time it has happened.