Reining NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson suffered from dehydration following Saturday night’s race at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway.
The six-time Cup champion drove his No. 48 Lowe’s Chevrolet SS back to pit road after the event, but needed assistance from his Hendrick Motorsports team getting out of the car. After being seen by medical technicians on pit road, Johnson was taken to the infield care center for further evaluation.
Johnson was treated and released shortly after midnight Sunday, where the eighth place finisher told members of the media he received five liters of fluid.
“Just got dehydrated in the car. Not exactly sure what led to it we will have to dig in and see what happened,” said Johnson. “I started cramping when I got out of the race car. Then when I was cramping I was trying to stand-up because I was fine when I sat down then I would stand-up I would get dizzy. When I would sit back down I would start to cramp again. Just really dehydrated.
Ended up with five liters of IV in me. I was definitely dry. I will have to dig in and understand what happened in the car. I was hot in the car so I will have to make sure all my fans were working and stuff like that. Scary moment and I hate that it happened, but have to learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Johnson said he felt fine inside the car, other than some minor cramping, but it wasn’t until he exited the car when everything went haywire.
“I sat in the car and was talking to my guys about the run and having a good race,” he added. “I started to cramp a little bit in my legs so I figured I would just get out of the car and as I climbed out of the car the cramping got far worse. Then standing outside the car I kind of got dizzy so I wanted to sit down. Once I sat down the cramping got worse so then I wanted to stand up. I got up and off the ground two or three times and that whole process got me really dizzy. And had the cramps really kicking so fortunately then I was able to get on the golf cart and come over here and get plugged into an IV.”
Johnson was scheduled to participate Sunday morning in the final stage of his 4-race Jimmie Johnson Foundation Wellness Challenge, a sprint triathlon in North Carolina. As a precaution, Johnson has elected not to participate.
“This week has been pretty light (training) just because I’m supposed to compete in an event tomorrow (Sunday) morning. Still going to go and attend, but won’t be able to compete especially with the cramping that I had. Just a lot of questions right now, but I cramped pretty bad there on pit road and got dizzy and light-headed and had to come over here and get a bunch of bags of IV.”
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