![]() ![]() Encouraged by friends and family, Karam mustered up the courage to attend another Ind圜ar race at Pocono. One of the lowest points came three years after the accident. He thought socializing might be a Band-Aid for his brain, but drinking only made things worse. On the occasions when he did emerge from his exile, Karam made the mistake of hanging out with the wrong crowd and going to parties he would have never attended previously. “You sit there and just think, ‘What if I spun slightly differently or did something different in the spin that altered the way the car hit the wall?'” he says. Deep down, he wondered if perhaps the online trolls were right. The darkness of his depression didn’t fade, but seemed to grow. When he did venture out, he’d sometimes only make it as far as a convenience store. When you’re a kid, you take that to heart.”įor a long time, Karam barely left his room. “I still had to log on to see what people were saying about me. “I didn’t have the mental maturity to be able to turn it off,” he says. Some critics would create social media accounts with no tweets and send Karam direct messages before he could block them. #RIPJustin”), one reply read, “He died because of you.” Another tweet said, “You carry this heavy cross on your back to the graveyard.” When Karam tweeted his condolences (“I can’t find the proper words to describe the pain and sympathy I feel for Justin and his family. Neither could some on social media, who hounded him with messages - the grimmest of which included calling Karam a murderer, telling him the wrong driver died and urging Karam to kill himself. No matter how many people tried to insist Wilson’s death wasn’t his fault, Karam couldn’t forgive himself. He was beloved in the racing community, with one writer who knew the British driver well describing Wilson as “ motorsport’s closest thing to a paragon of human virtue.” ![]() But at the time, Ind圜ar drivers raced with their heads exposed, and the combination of the speed and the debris were enough to leave Wilson unconscious with a traumatic head injury.Ī husband and father of two young daughters, Jane and Jessica, Wilson died the next day. Wilson had slowed to approximately 120 mph - roughly 100 mph less than top race speed - and the nose cone weighed just eight pounds. ![]() As caution lights flash and drivers instinctively slow down, the nose cone of Karam’s car bounces treacherously down the track, eventually striking 37-year-old driver Justin Wilson in the head. The New York Times has already proclaimed the 20-year-old with the model looks as “ the new face of Ind圜ar racing.” He’s a rising star who shows raw speed with uneven results, and on this late-August afternoon he’s in the midst of a dream scenario: Leading an Ind圜ar race at his home track, Pocono, with 21 laps to go.īut as Karam races through the middle of Turn 1, his car suddenly snaps around on its own and slams the wall, sending pieces of debris flying. To fully understand, we need to go back to the summer of 2015. “Pocono is an imperative part of the healing process,” says Jody Karam, Sage’s father. Pocono represents a final, giant hurdle in a journey that dragged Karam into the depths of depression and exposed some of the worst sides of humanity. On the surface, the occasion for this get together is some news that might not seem significant to outsiders: Karam is planning to run the July 23 NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Pennsylvania’s Pocono Raceway. ![]() “I’m glad I’m at the point now where I can finally talk about it,” he says. Karam is hungry, but he’s not ready to eat. But how do I become ready to be able to talk about it?”Īn untouched bowl of chips and guacamole sits in the center of the table. “Eventually, I knew I was going to talk to somebody about it. “I’ve had many nights sitting in my room thinking about a conversation like this,” he says, intense eyes peering from beneath a closely-cropped haircut. ![]()
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