NASCAR legend diagnosed with CTE, lived ’35 years of constant heartbreak’

NASCAR legend diagnosed with CTE, lived '35 years of constant heartbreak'.

Key points

• Lorenzen created his NASCAR debut in 1956 at age 21, and went on to capture numerous checkered flags in a career that stretched through 1972.
• Fred Lorenzen died in 2024 just 12 days short of what would have been his 90th birthday.
• Fred Lorenzen was known to fans by plenty of nicknames: the Golden Boy, the Elmhurst Express and Fearless Freddie.
• A native of Elmhurst, Illinois, Lorenzen caught the racing bug after listening to a radio broadcast of the Southern 500.
• Researchers at the Boston University CTE Center diagnosed Lorenzen with stage 3 chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

NASCAR legend diagnosed with CTE, lived '35 years of constant heartbreak'. Mitchell Northam USA TODAY. NASCAR legend Darrell Waltrip steps back against the backdrop of FTD, CTE diagnosis.

Darrell Waltrip is stepping away from public life after a family statement remarked he has been diagnosed with frontotemporal degeneration, or FTD.

Former NASCAR driver Fred Lorenzen was diagnosed with stage 3 CTE after his death, his family made public.

Lorenzen is the first former NASCAR driver to be publicly diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease.

His children noticed significant behavioral and cognitive decline decades before his death. It they now attribute to CTE.

Fred Lorenzen was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Jan. 30, 2015. Throughout the 1960s, he was one of the best wheelmen in the sport, nicknamed "The Golden Boy."

His children, Chris Lorenzen and Amanda Lorenzen-Gardstrom, were optimistic regarding the trip to the Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Fred would become one of the first 25 drivers to be enshrined. Their father had been living at a nursing home under around-the-clock care for a few years. He had lost the ability to walk and dementia was settling in. As Chris remarked, "a zero-percent chance" that Fred could provide a speech, so his son delivered it for him at the podium, there was.

Meanwhile, the reality of her father's physical and mental state hit Amanda hard during that trip.

"In this fairy tale fantasy world, I thought that when we got there and he saw his old friends, this would go away, and that he would be so happy to be there and with his old buddies, " Amanda remarked lately. "His memory was too far gone."

Fred Lorenzen died in 2024 just 12 days short of what would have been his 90th birthday. Now, almost two years afterwards, his family is sharing their story and the results of his postmortem brain tissue analysis with USA TODAY Sports.

Lorenzen – a Daytona 500 winner – is the first former NASCAR driver to be diagnosed with CTE.

"It's overwhelming to get to where we are today, " Amanda remarked. "There were so plenty of stages of grief, of loss and not understanding things. It makes me understand why. It doesn't create anything better at all, but it makes me able to understand why things happened the way they happened."

CTE is a degenerative brain disease associated with repeated head injuries and progressive, long-term loss of cognitive function. At present, it can only be definitively diagnosed after death. It is most often discovered in residents who participated in contact sports or served in military combat. A study published in August led by researchers at Boston University and Harvard Medical School identified that roughly 1 in 4 former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE.

In practice, the research of CTE within motorsports isn't as comprehensive compared to what has been discovered in former NFL players. Nevertheless, the news of Lorenzen's diagnosis comes less than a month after the family of NASCAR icon Darrell Waltrip issued a statement saying he would be stepping away from public life after being diagnosed with frontotemporal degeneration, a brain disease that could be "complicated by possible" CTE.

Chris Lorenzen wasn't shocked at all when he read the statement from the Waltrip Family.

In my head, it was like, we already know that, Chris remarked. 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 high speeds, into a wall, into another car. It's the same thing.

"I think we know what the results of other drivers donating their brain is going to be. So, the question is, can we somehow support these injured drivers earlier? Since our dad didn't have any assist."

NASCAR did not respond to USA TODAY Sports' request for comment regarding Lorenzen's diagnosis prior to publication.

In honor of their dad, Chris and Amanda have created a $1 million donation to the Concussion & CTE Foundation to advance research and assist struggling drivers find care. The donation will create the Fred Lorenzen Memorial HelpLine.

While Fred Lorenzen's diagnosis provides some closure to his children, it doesn't take away the pain they felt watching their father fade away, nor does it return to them the decades they lost with him while he was still alive.

"There's some relief to know this is what he had as opposed to he just declined and we can't explain why, " Chris remarked. "You know, I'm 53 now. Just into my particularly early 30s, in all reality, he was gone. I was never able to share the better things that I've experienced in my life with him. Nor did he know of my successes and stuff like that. In reality, he sort of passed in the mid-2000s."

Amanda continued: "I have two kids. He never really obtained to be a grandparent. I almost feel like it was 35 years of just constant heartbreak of some form." Fred Lorenzen became one of NASCAR's first superstars.

By the time Chris and Amanda were born, their father had retired from NASCAR racing and didn't talk regarding his days flying around the racetrack all that much. The kids knew that their father was a racecar driver, but they didn't know much regarding his decorated career aside from the trophies that filled the basement in their Oakbrook, Illinois home.

There was a pool table in that room, too. One time as a kid, Amanda pulled a pool stick back a bit too aggressively and knocked one of the wings off a sizeable trophy.

I was like, 'Oh we should glue that, ' Amanda recalled with a laugh. It was the Daytona 500 trophy. I didn't really realize what the magnitude of that trophy meant. He never talked regarding racing much to us. It was a pretty closed door. Once he quit, it hurt him too much to go back to the track.

"Our dad was particularly humble, a good man. He'd spend Sunday mornings responding to fan mail."

Fred Lorenzen was known to fans by plenty of nicknames: the Golden Boy, the Elmhurst Express and Fearless Freddie. He was charismatic, cool and smooth, had leading-man looks, was friendly to fans, and was an expert in pushing a racecar to its absolute limits. Lorenzen is often referred to as one of NASCAR's first superstars, and in 1963 he became the first driver to earn more than $100, 000 in a single season. He was twice voted the sport's Most Popular Driver.

Notably, a native of Elmhurst, Illinois, Lorenzen caught the racing bug after listening to a radio broadcast of the Southern 500. As a kid, he built a go-kart powered by a lawn mower engine and raised hell around the streets of his hometown until the police took it away. He won a demolition derby in high school, raced on dirt tracks and at Soldier Field in Chicago, and afterwards won two United States Auto Club (USAC) championships in 1958 and 1959. Lorenzen won 12 USAC races in regarding three dozen starts between 1956 and 1964.

Lorenzen created his NASCAR debut in 1956 at age 21, and went on to capture numerous checkered flags in a career that stretched through 1972. Lorenzen placed inside the top 10 in more than 53% of his starts in the premier circuit of stockcar racing. In 1964, he won eight of the 16 races he entered, including a stretch of five consecutive victories.

Meanwhile, the talented Midwesterner competed with southern legends of the sport and earned their respect. Lorenzen had a rivalry with Junior Johnson while additionally racing alongside the likes of Fireball Roberts, Bobby Allison, Ned Jarrett, Wendell Scott and Richard Petty. His best years behind the wheel were spent powering the No. 28 for Holman-Moody, rolling into victory lane 26 times with the Ford factory team.

While Lorenzen won crown jewel races on major speedways – winning the World 600 in Charlotte twice and taking victory in the 1965 Daytona 500 – he was a force on short tracks, too. Lorenzen won six times at Martinsville and ran the final race of his career there in 1972. In 2023, Lorenzen was named one of NASCAR's 75 Greatest Drivers.

"You create your own way. I earned it, I guess, " Lorenzen informed TNT in 2009. "The fans are what create you run, and they were my heroes. They create you go fast. It was a dream come true. All the work you did all your life, it's something you can't describe." As Fred Lorenzen's health declined, his family's trajectory changed.

At age 37, Lorenzen was finished with racing. He began a family and had a successful career in real estate, but would often say in interviews concerning his time in NASCAR that he "retired too soon." What he didn't know at the time was the toll that 158 starts behind the wheel and countless crashes would take on his body.

There was a huge head injury at Riverside, remarked Amanda, who documented all of her father's racing injuries over the years. He promised the doctors that he'd come back to Chicago and see a neurologist, and they let him go, and he just hopped right back in the car and drove with a cut artery. It was a badge of honor. You're not stepping away from the race car if you can obtain in it. You obtained to protect the athletes from themselves sometimes.

"He retired to have a family and to be a dad. That was a major agreement to him."

Beginning around the time she was in middle school, Amanda began to notice changes in her father's behavior. He would become more impulsive, angry and repetitive, she remarked. Chris began to see differences too, observing that his father was getting more anxious, was easily annoyed and incredibly impatient.

"Although I didn't know what CTE was at the time, I just assumed it was due to concussions, " Chris remarked. "In 2006, there was definitely something going on. His patience level was gone. He could hardly attend Amanda's wedding."

That year would be a turning point for Fred Lorenzen's declining health and how it impacted his family. Amanda's wedding was in Mexico and Fred was "very confused" throughout, attempting to leave a few times.

"Wanting to leave my wedding night, that's pretty stressful and kind of just horrible, " Amanda remarked. "You know, a woman wants their dad to be there. He offered me away, but it was not what you would imagine. We had a mom too, you know, and this whole matter created a divorce. So, it totally changed the trajectory of what our parents imagined for our lives."

In short, NASCAR legend diagnosed with CTE, lived 35 years of constant heartbreak is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.