Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to Connor Zilisch fall: 'I was six feet away'

Things took a scary turn in the NASCAR Xfinity Series over the weekend when Connor Zilisch took a tumble from his car in victory lane. He slipped and fell hard onto the deck.

Paramedics immediately scrambled over and Zilisch was down on the ground for what felt like a frightening amount of time. His team owner, Dale Earnhardt Jr., was right beside him.

“Standing six feet away,” Earnhardt said on the Dale Jr. Download podcast. “As soon as he was on the ground I got down there with the paramedics and was standing there the whole time. I was with him in the ambulance, going in the infield care center and all that. I wanted to make sure that I kind of knew what we were dealing with and what he might be dealing with. It was a scary thing but I’m glad that he’s OK. I’m glad his head’s good.”

Connor Zilisch suffered a broken collarbone as a result of the fall. It’s unclear exactly how that will impact his racing plans going forward, especially with the playoffs fast approaching.

Zilisch is also vying for the regular season title, currently leading in points. So there will be pressures to get back in the car, internal if from nowhere else.

“I am amazed, honestly, when Connor come out of the hospital into the waiting room after getting released, I could not believe from what we saw in victory lane, that he was in such good shape,” Earnhardt said. “Now, you know, collarbone aside. That’s not a great thing.”

Things could have been so much worse for Connor Zilisch. That was a point Earnhardt made.

“Listen, I’m just going to say that we, the end result of this, as sucky as it is to have the broken collarbone and, yes, that’s complicating things as he’s closing in on the playoffs, he comes out of that in a really, really good spot,” Earnhardt said. “Man, just what a freak, freak deal.”

What’s remarkable is that this kind of accident was viewed as a pretty rare occurrence. It’s not every day you have a driver injured during a victory celebration.

But perhaps it can serve as a warning to other drivers in the future. At the very least, it’s something they should consider.

“I hate it happened, and it’s embarrassing. I’m sure he’s embarrassed and he shouldn’t be ashamed in any way,” Earnhardt said. “Every time I see a driver stand on the door top in victory lane, there’s a little bit of me that gets just a little anxious. And I’ve never really worried about a guy falling onto his head. I’ve always kind of worried about them kind of losing their balance and blowing their knee out by landing on something wrong and tearing their ACL or something like that. I always kind of wondered about that.”

Connor Zilisch’s fall created a much more terrifying potential scenario. He could have been hurt so much worse.

That’s clearly what was on Earnhardt’s mind as he discussed the incident on the podcast. Head trauma is no joke, as he well knows.

“I would have bet $100 that he was going to spend an overnight in a hospital just for observation, and they said his scan was clear and he was talking fine, acting fine,” Earnhardt said. “They told him, ‘We’re not going to hold you, we have no reason to hold you because you’re fine.’ That amazes me that that can happen after you bounce your head off a concrete floor.

“And then there’s my experience where you have a crash in a car where you don’t really, your head doesn’t impact something directly but you have this two-week, four-week process where you know you’re not right and it ain’t all coming back and it ain’t snapping back. In some cases for people it’s six months. Years where they’re dealing with symptoms. These residual, nagging things that won’t allow them to be elite athletes or won’t allow them to get all the way back. That, to me, is the puzzling thing I suppose about concussions, head injury.”