NASCAR: Earnhardt Jr. to donate brain for concussion research

Dale Earnhardt Jr. hopes to donate his brain to science in the hope that it will help with future research into concussions.

The Sprint Cup star revealed his plans via Twitter on Saturday shortly after he retweeted a link to a story about three former Oakland Raiders players who plan to donate their brains for CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) research in honor of Ken Stabler. Stabler, who played in the NFL through the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, died of cancer last year, and after his death doctors discovered that he had suffered from Stage 3 CTE.

"What use is it [your brain] to you at that point?' Earnhardt tweeted in response to a fan's comment that the ex-Raiders players' decision was a 'big commitment.' "I'm gonna donate mine.'"

Earnhardt missed two races as the result of a pair of concussions in 2012. The first occurred when he suffered a tire failure and crashed heavily during a test at Kansas, with the second following a few weeks later after a crash at Talladega.

NASCAR introduced mandatory baseline concussion testing two years later.