Earnhardt Jr. driving simulator but not ready for a race car

Dale Earnhardt Jr. has driven a racing simulator as part of his rehabilitation for a concussion, and he said Saturday that the next eventual step would be to get into one of his late model stock cars. When that would be has not been determined as the Hendrick Motorsports driver continues to recover from a concussion suffered June 12 at Michigan that has kept him out of the car since July 9 at Kentucky. "I'm not ready [to get in a car]," Earnhardt said Saturday. "I know that. I'll know when I'm ready and it's not one of them things that has a schedule. You don't know when you're going to be, 'All right, I'm good, let's go do this.'

"I have been driving a simulator a little bit. That is not the same thing as driving a real race car, but it does challenge me mentally and does challenge the issues and symptoms."

Earnhardt is attending the Sprint Cup practices and Xfinity race Saturday as well as the Cup race Sunday at Dover. The noises and the commotion of a race weekend is part of his rehab to see whether it will trigger the balance issues he continues to battle. "Walking through the garage and signing autographs is tough," Earnhardt said as he walked through the Sprint Cup garage Saturday and down pit road to check on his Xfinity Series team.

"My balance gets bad. You've got a lot of things happening in your peripheral [vision] and stuff — that is something that is going to challenge it. That's pretty much it. My eyes have gotten a lot better. I don't really notice issues with my eyes quite as much anymore. But the balance stuff is still needing some work." At the point where he can walk through the garage and not have a reaction, Earnhardt said he would feel 100 percent normal. And then he would work on having the reaction time needed to race. "I feel so much better than I did five weeks ago," Earnhardt said. "I would have never thought about coming to the race track five weeks ago." ESPN.com