DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – NASCAR drivers spend days leading up to races – especially one as important and long as the Daytona 500 – making sure they’re properly hydrated to race for hours in 130-degree heat inside the car.
But with all those liquids comes a familiar feeling: “When ya gotta go ya gotta go,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. once tweeted.
The sport’s most popular driver added it only happens once or twice a season to him when he’s racing. But when that need for relief comes along, the drivers can’t get out of their cars in the middle of a race, so they just… go.
It’s apparently a common question Earnhardt is asked, and he shed some more light on the unpleasant subject Tuesday.
“It’s rare that it happens, but sometimes it does and if you think you can hold it, hold it,” he told For The Win. “But it’s also a distraction, and racing a car, you need so much focus, [so] if it’s a distraction, you go ahead and get rid of that distraction.
“But you’re hot and sweaty and soaking wet already. I guess it’s so uncommon outside of racing that it’s a shock to most people, but in our sport, when you hear about it, there’s a chuckle or two, but it doesn’t really surprise anybody that it happens to everybody once in a while.”
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Entering his 10th Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season, veteran driver Brad Keselowski said while the frequency of having to use the bathroom during a race varies from driver to driver, for him, it’s more like once or twice a career. Occasionally nature calls, but he said he rarely responds.
But there are easy ways around the issue if it’s not a damaging distraction.
“Once you get adrenaline going and sweating, you could go for hours,” Keselowski said. “You could probably go for a day without having to go. If something happens where you lose adrenaline or you’re not sweating, then you have problems – specifically when both of those happen – because now you’re in the shaking machine.”
It also helps if their bodies can balance being hydrated well with sweating it out. And for 2015 Daytona 500 winner Joey Logano, that efficiency combined with a large bladder definitely helps.
“I haven’t had to do that in a few years,” Logano said. “I just store water. I’m like a camel – I never have to go to the bathroom. So I don’t know, but for some, it’s not a good situation to be in.”
