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Concussion symptoms gave Dale Jr. 'doubtful moments' about racing again

Nick Bromberg
·College football and motorsports writer
Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn't compete in the final 18 races of the 2016 season. (Getty)
Dale Earnhardt Jr. didn’t compete in the final 18 races of the 2016 season. (Getty)

Dale Earnhardt Jr. admitted Tuesday that he wondered if he’d ever be able to rejoin the Sprint Cup Series as he dealt with the symptoms of a mid-summer concussion.

Junior told NBC Sports that he expects to be cleared to drive a race car in December after a final medical test. But he said there were times he wondered if what’s next didn’t involve getting back into a race car. From NBC:

“I mean I went through some really doubtful moments with this whole process when I was not doing well and my symptoms were really, really bad, and they lingered,” he said. “I’d never had the symptoms stay that long.

“I was thinking, ‘I may never race again. I don’t know how this is going to end.’ So I went from not knowing if I could do it to having to build my confidence back one little Lego at a time.”

Junior missed the second half of the 2016 season after suffering a concussion from an accident at Michigan. He started to feel symptoms from the hit a few weeks later at Kentucky and never raced again. He was replaced by Jeff Gordon and Alex Bowman.

But everything appears to be on track for a return to the track in the Daytona 500. Junior has said he’d like to test once he’s cleared by NASCAR so he’s not jumping back into the fray at Daytona with a long break. And his 2017 car was unveiled Tuesday.

It looks sharp. Junior said he likes to be involved with the design of his paint schemes and we have a job for Junior once he retires from the Cup Series. He needs to be the paint scheme czar.

Junior has good tastes in paint schemes and there are many, many ugly cars in the Cup Series. If Junior had to personally approve each paint scheme, the Cup Series would have much fewer hideous cars.

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!