When a driver’s persona oozes confidence, the last thing they want to hear is they are not invincible. Few drivers bear as much confidence as two-time NHRA Pro Modified champion Stevie “Fast” Jackson. However, at the end of the season, the unbreakable Jackson learned he was clearly... broken.

Jackson underwent three hours of surgery on Monday, December 19, 2022, to repair damage from several crashes dating back to as far as 2008 to as recently as 2018, when he crashed during the final round of the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals outside of Charlotte, NC. Doctors have said he could be sidelined for about six months. 

The first clue Jackson had of an injury came in 2008 when he crashed his original “The Orange Car” drag radial car. He was driving home from the event in Orlando, Fla, pulling a 32-foot stacker with a pick-up truck when he was forced to pull over on the side of I-95.

“I crashed the car, came back to the pits and loaded it up,” Jackson recalled. “I was about halfway home when I had to pull over because it felt like a steel shovel was in my spine; I knew something was going wrong.”

Jackson admitted, at the time, he subscribed to the theory drivers simply don’t get hurt. In other words, “You suck it up, buttercup.”

The combination of ego and adrenaline sent him back to work once he reached his shop. 

“Back then, we didn’t do that,” Jackson said of pausing to recover. “Plus, I had to race the next week. So we just went back, fixed up the car, patched it all together, and kept on going. You can do that in your twenties and just let it hurt for a while. It wasn’t until later that I realized that my head doesn’t work like it’s supposed to.”

To clarify, Jackson hadn’t sustained a head injury, but his personal chassis was another story. 

“I didn’t have as much range of motion going to one side,” Jackson said. “My neck and head would hurt when it wasn’t supposed to. It was just off and on; every time you rattle the tires hard, or you have a crash or do something, it rings your bell a little more than what it should. It’s something I’d learned how to manage.”

Then came Jackson’s 2018 accident, which should have sidelined him. 

 

 

“The doctors did a CAT scan and MRI on my neck afterward; they showed me an area where the disc had exploded and was compressing the spinal cord,” Jackson explained. “And I thought at that point I would have to have it done. But through physical therapy, exercise, working out, I could get it manageable.”

Jackson was doing well with rehab on his terms until the tour rolled into Brainerd, Minn., for the NHRA Lucas Oil Nationals. He realized he could no longer put the proverbial band-aid on a bullet wound. Well, he couldn’t do it much longer, anyway.

When I got in the race car and pulled my helmet on one time, just like I had done a thousand times before, it sent a sharp pain all the way through the heel on my other foot, and my left hand went numb,” Jackson said. “I haven’t had feeling in my left hand since July of this year. I knew that I probably needed to get it looked at.”

Jackson kept on racing and seeing the doctors, trying his best to finish the season. 

“I started going through more doctor’s appointments, and physical therapy and stuff like you normally would normally get like injections,” Jackson said. “When nothing was making it better, towards the end of this season, I started having a decline in motor skills and reflexes on the right side of my body, to where, when you check your reflexes with the little hammer, and your left leg jumps far, and your right leg doesn’t react the same way.

“I met with a bunch of neurosurgeons, and neurologists, and orthopedic surgeons, and we kind of figured that, all right, we need to do this right now. So what was going to be something I was going to try to put off another season ended up being a need-to-get-it-fixed-now type of deal.

Forget the shortcomings in the motor skills department; Jackson, who said he’s not interested in pain medication, said life was rapidly becoming miserable. 

“I remember thinking, I have way more hours out of the day where I’m in pain than I don’t,” Jackson said. “When you got 20 hours a day where you can hardly move and four hours of good times, that’s not good.”

When the doctors finally got the stubborn Jackson on the table, they knew they were in store for a challenge. 

“They went in there and reconstructed my spine, basically,” Jackson explained.” There’s a portion of the disc that had moved internally into the spinal column and compressed the spinal cord. They went in there, took the disc out, grafted some bone, removed some bone, put in a titanium cage, screwed me together, fused the spine in one area right there, and put this cool looking super glue stuff in there, an experimental glue that enhances bone growth, and makes it easier for your bone to grow together. 

“They got five trials of that this year. I was able to talk them into giving it to me. So basically, they screwed me all together, put a cage in there to hold the spine while the bone fuses, and glued me together. They uncompressed the nerve and moved that spinal bundle away from there.

“Four days removed right now; it feels like I’ve been in a fight with Macho Man and Randy Savage.

 

 

Jackson admits he’s a terrible patient when following doctors’ orders.

“Right now, my rehab is a couple of weeks of not doing anything, and I’m like everybody else; I don’t listen to the doctor,” Jackson admitted. “I was in the shop working the day of surgery after I got out. I’ve worked eight hours a day since then.”

Jackson said a typical fusion could take anywhere from eight to ten months for the bone to grow back together. He did say doctors are optimistic he could be back in action within six months. 

“It’s just going to be when they clear me,” Jackson said. “The closest study they have to the type of injury that I have, and the recovery, is on fighter pilots. And for a fighter pilot to have this sort of surgery, they require them to be out of the plane for six months. Much of it will be on how the bone’s growing together and how smart I am with the recovery deal.

“It’s not an uncommon procedure. This is the same surgery Peyton Manning had on his neck. My doctor did my surgery with a team of neurologists, neurosurgeons, and orthopedic surgeons. So I had what I think are the best folks working on it. I sat the doctors down, and I asked them, I said, ‘Are you the best at what you do?” 

“They said, ‘We think I’m pretty good at it.” 

“I said, ‘Well, I’m the best at what I do. I want to make sure you are too. So if you’re not the guy, I want to make sure we get the guy.”

Until then, Jackson has to adapt to the most formidable challenge of his life... the sidelines. 

“It’s killing me,” Jackson said. “Everybody’s planning to run at US Street Nationals and all these other races coming up, and I don’t know when I’ll be back in the car. I spoke to Scotty Cannon about this, and he didn’t have this surgery, but it was a similar type of surgery for a different part of his back. He told me his mistake was jumping in the car too fast. While it’s hard, I will wait till they clear me. I do not want to have to do this again.

“I miss the fans, and I miss being my usual self. I haven’t been able to make content and support my sponsors like I always have been able to do. I promise you guys that when I come back, the OLD Stevie Fast is coming back, and I’m kicking ass and taking names.”