NASCAR is back.
Paint will be traded once again Sunday at the “Track Too Tough to Tame,” Darlington Raceway in South Carolina.
Fans will not be allowed to attend due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Brad Keselowski is on the pole. He won that spot in a drawing because there was no traditional qualification.
There will be a second race at Darlington on Wednesday night, but fans won’t be on hand for either.
NASCAR finished four races before shutting down in March. Kevin Harvick leads the Cup Series standings.
Ryan Newman will return to racing Sunday exactly three months after he crashed Feb. 17 attempting to win his second Daytona 500.
The coronavirus pandemic allowed Newman additional time to heal and he ultimately missed just three races.
Newman says he has no memories of his harrowing accident on the final lap of the Daytona 500. He doesn't remember being in the hospital, who came to visit or anything else about his two-night stay for treatment of a head injury.
The first thing Newman can recall is walking out of a Florida hospital holding hands with his two young daughters. When he later watched a replay of the crash, he was flabbergasted by the violence of the wreck.
“As I watched the crash and had to make myself believe what I had went through, I really looked to my dad to say, ‘Hey, did this really happen?’” Newman said Thursday. "It’s crazy. I’m happy I’m here.”
It's a remarkable recovery from a frightful flight down the final stretch at Daytona. Newman was bumped from behind and his Ford Mustang made a sharp right into the wall, went airborne and was hit again by Corey LaJoie as the crumpled wreckage tumbled along the track with Newman inside.
Newman doesn't know if Lajoie's car compromised his cockpit; there is no definitive video showing how his head-and-neck restraint system was damaged or how his helmet was “crushed.”
“I don’t have anything that is conclusive that says that his car hit my helmet. I do know that parts of the inside of my car hit my helmet and crushed it," Newman said. "My helmet did have contact and my HANS did have contact, and I was being moved backwards in my seat as his car was moving me forward.
"Everything happened really quick and everything was all in that compartment, basically, and I guess it would be like a case of high-quality whiplash that kind of happened when I was hit.”
Credit: Chris O'Meara
Credit: Chris O'Meara
He was sedated, he said, almost immediately to calm him and ultimately keep him settled so that his brain could heal. He said he suffered “a brain bruise.”
“I kind of put it in layman’s terms of having a bruised brain because everybody knows what a bruise is,” said the Purdue engineering graduate and Indiana native. "You can’t see a concussion. It’s just a medical diagnosis. But a bruise you can see.
“So I kind of self-diagnosed myself with that bruised brain because the reality is you need to give time for a bruise to heal and that’s what I needed was time for my brain to heal.”
Newman, long known as the hardest driver in NASCAR to pass, said he's race fit for Sunday's event on one of the most technical tracks in the series.
“I’m hoping to do every lap and then one more after that — I think they are having a victory lap still," he said.
One driver who won’t be in the field at Darlington is Kyle Larson, who was suspended by NASCAR and dropped by his team after using a racial slur during a simulated race held during the hiatus. Driving his usual No. 42 car will be Matt Kenseth, in his first race on the big circuit since 2018.
The race will be shown on Fox Sunday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time.
