The physical part was no problem for Cristiano da Matta. It was patience the former open-wheel champion had to learn as he worked his way back from a serious head injury.
Da Matta, hurt on Aug. 3, 2006, when he hit a deer during a Champ Car test at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis., spent four weeks in a coma and seven weeks in hospitals after surgery to repair a ruptured blood vessel in his head.
Then began the long road back to racing.
“Actually, one thing I practiced a lot was my patience,” da Matta said last week during a news conference to announce he will resume his driving career May 17, teaming with friend Jimmy Vasser, another former open-wheel champion and former teammate.
The pair will co-drive a Bob Stallings Racing Pontiac Daytona Prototype sports car in a Grand-Am Rolex Series race at Laguna Seca Raceway.
Stallings, introduced to da Matta by Vasser at the Daytona 24-Hour race in January 2007, has become a close friend and confidant to the 34-year-old Brazilian.
“In the very beginning, this really was a project for a human being,” said Stallings, who also will continue to field a car for reigning series champions Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney.
After finally getting permission from his doctors to get back into a race car, da Matta tested one of Stallings’ cars March 20 at a road course in Texas.
“We wanted to see him come back and get in a race car just for him,” Stallings said. “But I’ll tell you something, after the test it kind of changed into something else, because, even though I’m happy for him as a human being, I now know he has been a champion before and he is going to be a champion again.
“I want him to be a champion in the Rolex Series in a Bob Stallings Racing car, and my guess is that’s going to happen very soon. He was absolutely awesome on the track.”
For da Matta, driving the No. 98 Pontiac Riley was as much relief as thrill.
“I had been waiting for that for a long, long time, for a good year and a half, waiting and waiting and waiting,” da Matta said, grinning.
“The first thing was nice that I got in the car and it felt good right away and there was no struggle to get back on it. I was very worried about it because in other sports, in biking and running and these kind of things, these things depend more on muscles and aerobics.
“The happy part,” he added, “is that I got back in the car and, like, three, four laps, everything was back. It was like, as we say, riding the bicycle. You don’t forget. And I hope that goes for racing, too.”
Vasser, also a team co-owner in the recently unified IRL IndyCar Series, said, “We were teammates together at PKV and raced many, many years on the CART/Champ Car circuit and I was anxiously waiting and calling on a daily basis to hear the reports from the test. It’s just fantastic to hear how well it went.
“Just going through that process, seeing where he’s come from, to me, that’s a miracle.”
It certainly wasn’t easy.
When da Matta left the hospital and flew home to Brazil to be cared for by his parents, the driver known to his CART/Champ Car teams as “Shorty” was 22 pounds lighter than the 130 he normally carries on his 5-foot-3 frame.
“I was bones and skin,” he said. “As soon as I went back to home, I started doing therapy every single day. I started to get back in shape and get everything back.
“One thing I was very lucky is because one of my hobbies is to ride the bicycle and that helped me a lot. But it still took me a long time, a good three months to get back in reasonable shape.
“Three months after getting back home, I was back to normal weight and I was back in shape, but it was a lot of work. The physical therapy was hard. It was good for me, but not great fun.”
Da Matta, who also spent nearly two seasons driving for Toyota in Formula One between stints in American racing, knew then that he wanted to race again. But his doctors kept saying no.
“Cristiano has been extremely patient with the doctors and very deferential to them,” Stallings said. “He was frustrated and wanted to get back into a car. But all of us, including Cristiano, wanted to wait until the doctors said, ‘Yes, you are 100 percent and you have everything there.’
“I actually spent a lot of time talking to the doctors myself because, obviously, all of us wanted to make sure that he was ready,” added Stallings, who hopes to find sponsorship to run da Matta full-time this season and in 2009. “We finally got the go-ahead.”
Stallings said he asked the doctor who had the final say if there was anything to worry about.
“He said, ‘No, he’s perfect really in every way,’” Stallings said.
So, how about an eventual return to open-wheel, where he won 12 races and the 2002 CART championship?
“The doctor said he can do anything he wants, but he would prefer Cristiano stick with sports cars,” Stallings said. “But, he said Cristiano could get in an open-wheel car if he wanted to.”
For now, though, da Matta is just happy to be able to resume his career.
Talking about the test, he said, “It was a big, big relief for me and a very, very nice day for me to be happy to know that I’m going to be able to keep doing this work that I have been doing for a good 10, 12 years professionally.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
