RYAN Gilroy is set to miss next month’s Dunlop Series finale in Adelaide due to an ongoing health battle following a heavy Bathurst practice crash.
Having been ruled out of the remainder of the Super3 round at Mount Panorama due to concussion, the 21-year-old wound up in Maitland Hospital for the best part of 24 hours after being admitted last Sunday night.
“I’m not actually sure what it was, to be honest,” Gilroy told V8 Sleuth.
“It was just sudden onset headaches and dizziness and all concussion-related, so I had to get rushed to hospital and have some more scans done on my head.
“So it was a little bit of a scary time but otherwise it came back all clear.
“Now we’re just going through the process of seeing doctors and neurologists to get back and recovered.
“We’ve spoken to Andre (Morse, AIM Motorsport boss) to say that I probably won’t be medically cleared at all, just because the recovery time (the neurologist has) given me is too long for me to get back in the car appropriately, which is a bit of a shame.”
Morse, who this week confirmed the sale of the 2021 Bathurst 1000-winning ZB Commodore he had owned, is now on the hunt for a replacement driver for the KR004 Nissan Altima which AIM leases off MW Motorsport.
“We do have that as an ongoing arrangement (with MWM) and we are open to offers if someone is looking for a drive at Adelaide, because we don’t know if Ryan is going to be medically fit in time,” he said.
As for the incident itself, Gilroy explained: “I think because I have got such a tall upper torso, my head is pretty well up in the rafters.
“We have got rollcage padding and whatever else but it was a bit of a double impact, the crash, and I’m pretty sure that my head would have made some pretty firm contact with the rollcage padding up above.
“It’s one of those freak things, the angle it must have hit it at. We haven’t done an investigation into what or why, I think it is just one of those freak things that has turned out the way it has.”
With his campaign headlined by a Super3 round podium at his home race in Newcastle, Gilroy is not yet sure what 2024 has in store for him.
“We’re still figuring out the game plan, but the big thing at the moment is just getting all fixed up,” he said.
Jobe Stewart is the Super3 points leader with just Adelaide to come.
