Side by Side

March 9, 2011 (NASCAR.COM)

Wearing a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, Jerry Nadeau blends right in with the crew members coming and going in the No. 1 hauler. Much like the driver he's working with, it's been a while since he's been at the race track with any degree of regularity, but for very different reasons. A head injury suffered in a 2003 crash at Richmond prematurely ended the career of a driver who had won the Cup season finale at Atlanta just three years earlier. The effects are still there -- his left side always feels like it's asleep. He'll never compete in a race car again, a sad reality that so overwhelmed him, he stayed away from the race track for nearly four years.

"I got tired of just going to the tracks and having that feeling of, 'Oh God, I want to be out there,'" said Nadeau, still as affable and engaging as he's always been. To meet him, you'd never think he still bore hidden scars from his accident -- which is part of the problem. "You have people come up, fans, friends, and say, 'Jerry, you look great, why aren't you racing?' I heard it this morning at the restaurant. I don't know. It's tough to swallow sometimes. But this is it."

For someone who knew only racing, the abrupt transition to life outside the car has been a painful one. And yet, here he is, back at the race track, grabbing a pair of yellow headphones with his name on them, heading up to the spotter's stand where he watches the race. There Nadeau gives Earnhardt advice over the radio that has more to do with focus and perspective than actually driving the vehicle. Afterward he'll come back down to the garage and they'll talk some more, sometimes about things like the right lines to take around a race track, more likely about big-picture topics like how to take care of equipment and stay composed behind the wheel.

Meet Jeffrey Earnhardt and Jerry Nadeau, student and teacher. They are two drivers in the midst of two very different journeys, one trying to capture the subtle mechanics that can launch a career to the next level, one trying to recapture the fulfillment those capabilities once provided. And yet, they need each other for the same reason -- to figure out where to go next.

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