BRISTOL, Tenn. — After a six-week long road to recovery and with the support of his team of doctors, Matt Tifft confirmed in a press conference on Friday at Bristol Motor Speedway that he has been cleared to return behind the wheel of a race car.
The positive news comes after Tifft had a benign brain tumor removed via successful surgery on July 1.
“They (the doctors) feel that I am at a point now where I can start to work back at going back to racing,” Tifft said. “Actually this weekend on Sunday at Hickory, I’m going to get in a late model and start to get back in the seat. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to that.”
During the press conference, Tifft went into in-depth detail about the process of the surgery, his recovery period over the past month and the discussions that went into ensuring he would be able to return to racing in a safe manner for both he and his fellow competitors.
“On July 1, I had a craniotomy,” Tifft said. “It was a successful surgery, they got as much as they could out and with these things, they best describe it as a wet cotton ball like in a cup of water basically. They can pull out as much as they can, but there’s always going to be a couple strands left in there. That’s just one of the risks that they know of, but they were actually able to go in and do a fairly aggressive surgery and get the most out as possible.
“Every day I just got stronger and better and to the point that I was able to start driving a street car again and get back to normal life,” Tifft added. “After that I was able to get back to normal physical activity level and what we did then was after the surgery and after we felt like it had healed enough, we did a five day EEG study – before and after the surgery we wanted to make sure that there was no chance or seizures whatsoever.”
“This is obviously out of respect for everybody with competition and making sure everybody is safe and for myself being out on the track as well just because the nature of what we do is obviously a high pressure situation. Proved both times that there was no evidence of seizures whatsoever so that was a huge step in the recovery process ultimately to show that it was a successful surgery and my brain was functioning at a healthy and safe level.”
Tifft, who is a member of this year’s NASCAR Next class, made six NASCAR XFINITY Series starts this season prior to the discovery of the tumor with two top 10s and a pole (Talladega Superspeedway) for Joe Gibbs Racing in the No. 18 Toyota.
Since his leave of absence began, Sam Hornish Jr., Dakoda Armstrong, Kyle Busch and most recently Owen Kelly have subbed for Tifft in the car, with Hornish’s pinch-hitter victory at Iowa Speedway among the highlights.
Tifft was also a driver of the Red Horse Racing No. 11 Toyota Tundra in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series before the tumor’s discovery, with three season starts-to-date, including a top five effort at Charlotte in May.