“I was told I would never drive a race car again,” Matt Tifft had previously said, talking about what halted his racing career. Two words that no one in their wildest dreams would imagine hearing—’Brain Tumor’. This came at a time in Tifft’s career as he was climbing the ranks in NASCAR. The 28-year-old began his racing journey when he was only 11, soon making a shift to super late model stock cars, then the ARCA Series, and eventually to NASCAR Truck racing in 2014.

Tifft was just 10 races into the 2016 Truck season when he was diagnosed with the tumor. Tifft’s career was only taking off, having bagged his first top 5 in the third-tier series. During this time, the youngster had also made a few Xfinity starts. Showing will and persistence, he made a comeback in just three months in 2017, driving Joe Gibbs Racing’s number 19 car in the Xfinity Series. Fast forward to his 2019 Cup debut, facing another medical problem, again halting things to him becoming the youngest team owner in NASCAR history.

Tifft’s NASCAR journey has been full of turmoil. Recently, Tifft, in an Exclusive Interview with EssentiallySports, dwelled on the whole journey and how it proved to be a transformative one.

The Virginia native, after his comeback, ran two full seasons in Xfinity (2017, 2018), with 8 top-5 finishes and 32 top-10s. In both seasons, he made it to the playoffs, finishing 7th in 2017 and bettering it in 2018 by ending the season in 6th place. Owing to his success, he was promoted to the Cup Series after signing with Front Row Motorsports. However, in only six races in the 2019 season, a tragedy occurred. Ahead of the Martinsville race in the spring, he fainted after having a seizure in the FRM hauler. And this was not the last of it; several seizures followed this. And in January 2020, he was diagnosed with epilepsy, which prohibited him from driving a passenger car, let alone a race car.

As Matt Tifft in the exclusive chat with EssentiallySports journalist Brahmi Dhaytadak went back to 2019 dwelling on that period, he said, “So you know it was really an interesting period because I had been a rookie in the NASCAR Cup Series and I just signed an extension of a contract after that as well. And really thought my whole career was taking off. And then all of a sudden, all of it was just kind of done, in a 10th of a second. You know, it was just, it was just over. And so you know. I really never thought but that I would race again after that.”

This was the second instance where his racing career was halted, something he had been doing since his childhood. Naturally, it was a big shock to him. “And I kind of went through a big identity crisis because since I was a little kid, it’s all I wanted to do. It’s all I had wanted to work towards. And here I’m sitting going, I don’t have a job, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I moved from Ohio down to North Carolina to go be a race car driver,” Matt Tifft added.

This was when FRM and Tifft decided to part ways, him wanting to focus on his health. However, according to Matt Tifft, he did not want to leave the racing industry and was willing to take any job available; he was even ready to get involved in media and PR for a team.

This was also the advent of COVID, where the racing industry came to a pause. NASCAR races too were halted for at least 10 weeks, and people lost jobs—just a chaotic time. However, this proved to be a blessing in disguise for Tifft. During dinner with his friend and NASCAR driver, B. J. McLeod, they discussed starting a new team. And this is how Live Fast Motorsports was born, driving its first full cup season in 2021 and being piloted by McLeod.

• McLeod is still making part-time Cup starts; he drove 5 races this season. This also made Matt Tifft the youngest person (24 years old back then) to own a Cup team in NASCAR history.
• Tifft was also named in the Forbes “30 under 30” list in 2022. Amid all this, the 28-year-old also got divorced, remarried, had kids, and also relocated to Ohio.

All these ups and downs proved to be a spiritual journey for him. Emphasizing the real twists and turns of life, Matt revealed to EssentiallySports, saying, “So just a crazy amount of events going on. The relationship I talked about had a tumultuous time and end up getting a divorce. So just all these giant life events in 3-4 years you know really stacked on top of me for a long time and so it definitely was a lot of soul searching. A lot of… just trying to figure out who I was, what my purpose was.” 

Matt Tifft is back in racing!

Tifft in May 2021 was okayed to drive a passenger car, experiencing no seizures. And then there was no stopping him. In the first half of 2023, she returned to racing, running three Late Model races in Wisconsin, firstly at Marshfield Speedway and a pair of features at Golden Sands Speedway. In 2024, he ran several late-model races. He had committed to at least participating in 30-35 events this year. Not just the Late Models, he also debuted in the World of Outlaws in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Matt Tifft recently ran his last race of the season at Whynot Speedway in the Super Late Model division. Delighted to be back in racing, he took to X and shared, “Dirt season wrapped up. Great weekend here at Whynot Speedway. 5 years to the day of the seizure at Martinsville thinking my career was over. Thank you to all who have supported me, it’s a blast to be back in the seat.” 

In addition to this, his racing schedule also involved a couple of starts in the Trans Am TA2 sports car series and was recently seen driving on Road America. However, his NASCAR debut still seems distant. As previously reported by The Athletic, he had said, “Years down the road, I would love to be able to come back to NASCAR at some point. And if that day comes, I want to be as well-rounded a driver as I can be, the best driver that I could be. I truly see this as an opportunity to go and learn and to win and then go from there.” 

Let’s hope to see him soon in NASCAR. What do you think? Should Matt Tifft make a NASCAR Cup comeback and continue from where he left off?