MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Sept. 4, 2016) – Dale Earnhardt Jr. met with the media prior to Sunday night’s Southern 500 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway to talk about the decision to take him out of the No. 88 Chevrolet at Hendrick Motorsports for the rest of the 2016 season.

With him were team owner Rick Hendrick and Dr. Micky Collins, the doctor overseeing his treatment at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and you can take a few things away after they spoke: first, the goal is to have Earnhardt Jr. in the car at Daytona in February, he’s not retiring, and he’ll be in the driver’s seat as long as he wants to be.

“I have a passion and desire to drive,” Earnhardt said, “and I’m as good as I’ve ever been inside the car. As Rick says, we have unfinished business.”

Hendrick put to rest JR Nation’s concerns that the 13-time NASCAR Most Popular Driver would be going anywhere.

“We were talking before he had to get out of the car about extensions [to his contract],” Hendrick said. “I want him to race with me as long as he can and he wants to be there.  The seat is his and I expect, we’ve got a lot of time between now and Daytona. I saw him like two or three weeks ago and then I saw him last Monday and I saw him today, the improvements have been phenomenal and listening to the doctor we are excited about Dale Earnhardt, Jr. being in the car at Daytona.  Excited about him racing beyond 2017.”

Collins, who treated Earnhardt Jr. for his first concussion back in 2012, spoke at length about the types of concussions and specifically the ones that Earnhardt Jr. is experiencing. Collins said there are six different types of concussions, and that Earnhardt Jr. was suffering from three of them when he first saw him in July.

“We have actually learned now that there are six different clinical profiles or different types of concussions that we see,” Collins said. “They can be cognitive issues or thinking problems…they can be problems with something called the vestibular system in the brain, which allows Dale to interpret movement and motion and stabilizes his vision when he moves his head and interpret complex visual information.  The third type of concussion is ocular or your eye movements, actually moving your eyes in tandem, bringing your eyes together diverging your vision.  The fourth type of concussion is migraine.  The fifth type is neck and the sixth subtype can be anxiety and mood related problems.

“When I first saw Dale a month and a half ago I can tell you he was pretty sick. He was having problems with the vestibular system, with the ocular system and with some anxiety and mood issues that is very much associated with these problems.  We have made progress with this injury to the point where we actually matched treatments to the different types of concussions that can occur and we have very specific treatments that can treat these different problems that Dale’s experiencing. In fact, over the last two or three weeks I’m pleased to tell you that the fruits of that labor are now paying off.  Dale has been a model patient.  I know this is cliché sitting up here, but Dale has worked as hard as any patient that I treat currently or in the past.  He has been very diligent about doing his therapies and we actually have very specific treatments that are targeting these problems that Dale has and we are seeing the benefits of that.”

Earnhardt Jr. agreed that the treatment was going well, saying he has noticed the changes for the better.

“I feel like the recovery is going really good,” he said. “I’m starting to see improvements as we are going.  It seems like this has lasted a really long time, but when you look at it on paper it has been a very short period and the gains that I’ve felt in that short period give me a lot of confidence that this is going in the right direction. And all the stuff and hard work we are doing is paying off.

“It’s certainly fun to be here at the race track and to be able to see the team and be in this atmosphere that you get so used to being in week-in and week-out.  I’m happy to be here today and it certainly is a place where you get pretty good exposure and it drives your symptoms a little bit so I’m getting some good exercise as we speak. It has been a real interesting experience and I’ve learned a ton.  I have a lot of respect for Micky (Collins) and his group and the direction that they are giving me is really working.  I struggled with my eyes for a while and I’m starting to see improvements there which I was thrilled to wake up one day and feel a difference and start to see improvement there.  Riding in a car or walking to gain stability that I’ve talked about before is starting to improve, which was a major relief for me because that was probably the most difficult thing to deal with throughout the day because it was there 24 hours a day.  My balance is miles better than it was when I first went to see Micky.  We do a lot of exercises every single day.  Amy (Reimann, Fiancé) has been there every step of the way pushing me to stay focused and to realize the progress we have made and to keep working hard.  It’s been a good experience and I’m looking forward to getting well and definitely on the right track.”

While the recovery is going well, Earnhardt Jr. said he’s not happy with not being at the track and involved every week.

“I’m very disappointed,” he said. “I miss my guys, I miss the garage, I miss all of you folks (the media).  It’s so much fun to see so many familiar faces.  That part is the disappointing part because I am just used to being here and this is sort of our circle, our family.  It’s been weird not being at the track.  Again, I would love to be competing with my guys.  We are obviously out of the Chase and all that stuff, but I’m not really concerned about that I just enjoyed what I was doing, enjoyed my job and have a great group of guys that believe in me as a driver.  It’s a difficult decision.”

Getting back on the track is still going to be a process, Collins said.

“It’s a razors-edge concentration focus,” Collins said. “I want to make sure everyone understands the systems that are injured for Dale are the systems that make Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Dale Earnhardt, Jr. His ability to sustain focus and stabilize his vision when he moves his head and interpret complex visual information. Though Dale is feeling as a normal human being, to get him to that level of being a race car driver is exactly to your point, it is a different set of skills than any of us in this room have. I’m very confident that we will be able to do that.  Right now…I don’t have specific criteria because that is a ways… we have time. But, yes, I can tell you we are going to need to stress the systems enough to see if they produce any problems and actually rehab those systems enough to where he is not going to run into problems with this injury.  I feel confident that we are heading in that direction.”

Be sure to check out the full transcript here.