Fred Lorenzen Receives Posthumous Stage 3 CTE Diagnosis

Former NASCAR driver Fred Lorenzen had stage 3 chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), researchers at the Boston University CTE Center determined through an analysis of his brain tissue after his death in 2024. His family disclosed the diagnosis nearly two years later, making Lorenzen the first former NASCAR driver publicly diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease associated with repeated head injuries.

Lorenzen, a Daytona 500 winner known as The Golden Boy, was among NASCAR's most prominent drivers during the 1960s. His children, Chris Lorenzen and Amanda Lorenzen-Gardstrom, said their father experienced substantial cognitive and behavioral decline decades before his death, leaving them struggling to understand his condition.

According to his family, Lorenzen spent his final years in a nursing home under around-the-clock care. He eventually lost the ability to walk and developed severe memory problems that prevented him from fully participating in his NASCAR Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Jan. 30, 2015.

His son delivered the induction speech because Lorenzen could no longer give it himself. Amanda said she had hoped that reconnecting with former racing friends during the ceremony might improve his condition, but his memory had deteriorated too far.

Reflecting on the diagnosis, Amanda described the emotional toll of understanding what had happened to her father.

"It's overwhelming to get to where we are today," Amanda 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 is a progressive brain disease associated with repeated head impacts and long-term cognitive deterioration. According to current medical understanding described in the report, the condition can only be definitively diagnosed after death and has been identified most frequently in people involved in contact sports or military combat.

A study released in August by researchers at Boston University and Harvard Medical School found that approximately one in four former NFL players who died between 2016 and 2021 had CTE. Research examining the disease in motorsports remains less extensive than studies involving former professional football players.

Chris Lorenzen said the diagnosis did not surprise him after learning about other athletes who developed the disease. He questioned why drivers exposed to high-speed crashes and collisions would face different risks from those experienced in other contact sports.

"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."

The Lorenzen family also connected the diagnosis to the recent announcement that former NASCAR driver Darrell Waltrip would step away from public life after being diagnosed with frontotemporal degeneration, a brain disease that his family said could be complicated by possible CTE.

NASCAR had not responded to USA TODAY Sports' request for comment about Lorenzen's diagnosis before publication. His children said they wanted greater attention to the needs of former drivers experiencing neurological decline.

To honor their father, Chris and Amanda donated $1 million to the Concussion & CTE Foundation to advance research and help struggling drivers access care. The donation will establish the Fred Lorenzen Memorial HelpLine.

Although the diagnosis offered some explanation for their father's deterioration, his children said it could not restore the decades of family experiences they lost as his condition progressed.

Chris, now 53, said his father had effectively become unable to share in his life by the time Chris reached his early 30s. Amanda also described the effect on her own family, including her two children, whom Lorenzen never had the opportunity to know well as a grandfather.

"I have two kids. He never really got to be a grandparent. I almost feel like it was 35 years of just constant heartbreak of some form," Amanda Lorenzen-Gardstrom said.