UrbanUpdate

Charlie Kimball was three years into his career as an IndyCar driver, having deferred entry into Stanford to pursue a sport he learned about from his father (himself a race-car engineer/designer), when a sudden strange rash brought everything to a halt.

The condition was benign. But the doctor who checked him out nine years ago had some follow-up questions. “He asked if I had anything else wrong with me I wanted to ask him about,” Kimball says, “and I said, 'No, I’m 22,' like that meant something. Then I mentioned I had been thirsty, drinking eight, ten, twelve bottles of water a night, and going to the bathroom all the time.” The doctor had Kimball get on a scale, and he realized that he’d lost 25 pounds since the last time he’d weighed himself, just five days before.

Kimball’s diagnosis was type 1 diabetes, which put him among 1.25 million other Americans but exactly zero other IndyCar drivers. Up until that point, he had racked up a lot of wins and podiums while racing in Europe and the U.S., but the news forced him to quit racing midseason and reevaluate, well, pretty much everything. “It took me a few months to get healthy and get strong, to figure out what diabetes meant for me as a person,” he said. “I had to figure out how to change what I was doing in life to get back behind the wheel and be not only safe but also competitive.”

Provided by Charlie Kimball

The next season, he was behind the wheel and finished second in his first race back. This week he’s gearing up for the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach (April 17). Now Kimball drives for Novo Nordisk, the Danish company that manufactures the insulin he uses, and over the last near decade of racing he and his team have come up with some intricate hardware to monitor his bios. “My car is different from everyone else’s because I wear a continuous glucose-monitoring system. I have a sensor on my body, and it transmits to a display on my dash, where I can see speed, lap time, oil pressure, blood sugar—the car and my body data are right there together.”

That data is also piped to his pit team, who monitor his and his car’s vitals simultaneously. If his blood sugar dips too low, he uses a contraption of his own making that sort of resembles a beer helmet. “In my car I’ve got one bottle with water and one with orange juice. There’s a valve that my dad designed and we 3D printed, and those bottles come together at that valve and a tube runs right into my helmet. So I flick that valve and get orange juice and bring my blood sugar up.”

In general IndyCar driving is a hell of an ordeal. There’s no power steering or power brakes, so drivers need to be strong enough to keep the car under their control and light enough to not slow the car down, often enduring two-hour races with heart rates of 170 the entire time. All this in sauna-like temperatures while wearing several layers: flame-retardant suits, bulky helmets, “long, sweaty, fireproof underwear” (Kimball’s words, not ours).

Before his diagnosis, Kimball never prioritized nutrition. But when it was forced into his attention, he brought an engineering-like meticulousness to finding a solution. “I’m a better athlete because of getting diagnosed with diabetes. I was forced to learn about my body and physiology, and now I understand how my body processes food and what works better for me than ever before.”

BreakfastTwo sunny-side-up eggs, two pieces of wheat toast (one dry, one with butter and jam), two strips of bacon, ½ cup of fruit salad

Pre-race lunchGrilled chicken breast, ¾ cup of pasta with olive oil, salad with balsamic dressing, 1 cup of fruit salad, bottle of water

Just past the finish lineBanana

DinnerSteak and fries

Luke Darby is a contributor to GQ, covering news, entertainment, and the environment. A Louisiana native, he now resides in Cleveland, and his writing has also appeared in Outside, the Dallas Observer, and Marie Claire.Related Stories for GQReal Life Diet