IMSA: Gidley on the mend one year after Daytona crash

Memo Gidley's life drastically changed one year ago at the Rolex 24 at Daytona. The veteran racer was part of a vicious crash in the Bob Stallings Racing/GAINSCO Corvette DP that broke just about everything a driver needs to control his car, and after an endless series of surgeries and rehabilitative efforts, he says the one-year anniversary of the crash brings mixed emotions.

"It's not an anniversary that I'm happy to celebrate, honestly," he said from his home in Northern California. "It's nice, for sure, to have time under my belt, because it means I'm further away from when it was so painful. That's the happy part for me."

Memo called days before the Verizon IndyCar Series race in Sonoma last August, saying he wanted to come out to the track and make the rounds for the first time since Daytona. He was still very weak, in considerable pain, and had lost a lot of weight, but his ever-positive spirit was on full display. Progress over the last few months has been considerable.

"That is actually not that long ago, at least for me – when I look back at that weekend, and I hadn't decided to come out to see you guys I think until Thursday night because, even though Sonoma Raceway is literally 10 minutes from my house, there was no way I was going to drive out there and there was no way I was going to attempt to walk around, just because I was under the kind of pain that just wasn't making me happy.

"When I look back at that, actually, a lot has changed, for sure. That is kind of my mindset as far as also I look back four months before that and four months before that, my goodness, so much has changed."

Even with a year of recovery behind him, Gidley says the road to full mobility is lined with more medical procedures.

"It is definitely going in the right direction, but if there's one thing, it's the pain, which is not a bone pain but it's just that mysterious sort of nerve pain that I have had, but that is definitely tapering down. It's allowing me to go from not being able to ride in the car, not being able to drive a car, to being able to drive one. And now I can drive for about an hour and a half before I want to get out of the seated position. So that is definitely getting better.

"And then all of the other stuff... The fusion is getting better, the bones healing, that's getting better. I go in in a week and a half and they do the one-year x-ray, which hopefully at that point they'll be able to see more where the vertebrae are at because at that point it is filled in and calcified and it shows up on an x-ray. All that is getting better. The only thing is that there are always like these, I call them these annoying little things, but we are talking about surgery, so...

"Things like I had my knees done two months ago because they were painful to bend and so I had hardware taken out of the left side, and then I had a surgeon go in and orthoscopically remove fragments and also try and smooth out the inside of my knee. I was hoping that that would get better but the right knee, if anything, it is a little bit worse than it was before. There are all these little things – actually, by now I was hoping my elbow would be done too, but I'm waiting to get my knee taken care of before they go in and remove the bone fragments and also the hardware from my left elbow.

"It's definitely like three or four steps forward, two steps back... It is all going in the right direction but, right when you think, OK, you start thinking about where you're going to be, you take a step back. It's not like you're taking a step back because you're not healthy. It's just nature and you just have to deal with certain things. A lot of those things can be dealt with doctors, which is great. But it still takes time."

The milestone Gidley continues to reach for – and uses to motivate himself on the harder days – is getting back on track.

"Getting back into a go-kart, training on four wheels – it's definitely something that I have sort of waited for that, based on advice from my local orthopedic spine surgeon doctors, I've waited for that one-year mark because then they can, at least from a safety standpoint, look at things and say, 'Hey, your back looks like it's fused, it's probably as strong as it was before. So if you happen to bang it or something happens, you wouldn't be taking an unusual chance.'

"That is coming up. I've had a few teams that have offered cars just as friends and said, 'Hey, let me know when and we'll go out and you can drive.' I want to do it. I'm excited to do it. I'm not sure what's going to happen. I'd like to get in my go-kart first. I'm thinking in the next month or so. But it is still part of a training process to get things back going again. Because what I try and do is add things that I normally did before the accident – that is my goal."

We closed our conversation with a note from Memo about his BSR teammates and the continual fan support that he's received.

"Guys like Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty and Bob Stallings – I mean, we all deal with certain things that affected us differently after the crash and the program stopped, but I have never had any question that they were going to continue doing what they do, which is awesome.

"And the fans...it has made such a huge difference. I mean, it's been an unbelievable... As much as I say, yeah, it could be worse, it could be better too, but for me, I imagine what most people have to deal with... I mean, I see people at my gym in the therapeutic pool, they don't have fans that reach out to them. And they are injured. Really injured. Some of them are chronically injured and deal with pain chronically on a daily, weekly basis, forever.

"Some of them are trying to heal from things but they don't have maybe the network of doctors, references, people supporting them, ideas. They don't have any of that stuff. So I am definitely lucky from that standpoint. And I appreciate everything that I have, immensely. I will be back soon."​