Late NASCAR driver Fred Lorenzen was posthumously diagnosed with CTE. It makes him the first known NASCAR driver diagnosed with the disease.
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First Known NASCAR Driver Diagnosed With CTE
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive brain disease associated with repeated head impacts, including concussions and subconcussive blows. It leads to a buildup of abnormal tau protein that kills brain cells. The disease has been found in athletes who participated in contact sports and others exposed to repeated head trauma. It can only be diagnosed after death (Indiana University).
Per a Tuesday (October 20) report from Reuters, the late Daytona 500 winner was recently diagnosed with Stage 3 chronic traumatic encephalopathy by the Boston University CTE Center.
Lorenzen's Children Speak Out
In a statement to USA Today, his children Chris Lorenzen and Amanda Lorenzen-Gardstrom noted that the late NASCAR star lived with dementia for years before his death.
"It's overwhelming to get to where we are today," Lorenzen-Gardstrom said to the outlet. "There were so many stages of grief, of loss, and not understanding things. It makes me understand why. It doesn't make anything better at all. But it makes me able to understand why things happened the way they happened."
CTE has been widely documented in athletes from contact sports such as hockey and football. Thus, professional sports leagues such as the NFL and the NHL have started to take concussions more seriously. In his Netflix documentary Mr. McMahon, former WWE chairman Vince McMahon even talked about how they stopped using chair shots to the head because of the risk. But this is the first known diagnosis for NASCAR, which is technically a non-contact sport. But Chris Lorenzen says he feels there is just as much of a risk.
"In my head, it was like, we already know that," Chris Lorenzen said. "Just in my opinion, if we're seeing all these former NFL players ?with CTE from head injuries. How would NASCAR be any different? This is going at high speeds, into a wall, into another car. It's the same thing."
Fred Lorenzen died in 2024 at the age of 89.
