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Fred Lorenzen, the Daytona 500 winner who died in 2024 at 89, has become the first known NASCAR driver diagnosed with CTE.
The Boston University CTE Center confirmed he had Stage 3 chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease linked to recurrent head impacts.
Lorenzen’s children, Chris Lorenzen and Amanda Lorenzen-Gardstrom, shared the postmortem analysis with USA Today on Tuesday, noting their father spent his final years in care showing dementia symptoms.
“It’s overwhelming to get to where we are today,” Lorenzen-Gardstrom said. “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 more closely connected to head injuries suffered by football players or participants in other contact sports, but Lorenzen’s son was not surprised by the diagnosis.
“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 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 help these injured drivers earlier? Because our dad didn’t have any help.”
NASCAR did not respond to USA Today’s request for a comment.
In 1998, Lorenzen was named one of NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers.
One of NASCAR’s first superstars, Lorenzen was known as the “Golden Boy” for his rugged, movie-star looks. He won 26 career Cup races and made starts in 12 seasons from 1956 to 1972.
He was the first driver in NASCAR to earn more than $100,000 in a single season, which he did in 1963.
Lorenzen battled dementia in his later years and pledged his brain to the Concussion Legacy Foundation.
His daughter, Amanda Lorenzen Gardstrom, told The Associated Press in 2016 she was convinced Lorenzen had CTE from years of brutal wrecks and hits from the 1960s, one of the most dangerous eras in racing history.
“He never stopped to heal,” she said.
His daughter said Lorenzen first showed signs of dementia around 2006. He had memory loss and used a wheelchair at Oak Brook Healthcare in Illinois.
