For just the second time this year, Felix Sabates emerged from one of the Chip Ganassi Racing haulers parked in the Cup Series garage Sunday afternoon at Talladega Superspeedway. And he couldn’t help but sport a smile.

“I’m lucky to be here,” Sabates said.

Last fall, Sabates suddenly fell ill and had been missing in the garage until last weekend at Richmond International Raceway. To this day, Sabates says the doctors still aren’t sure exactly why he became sick or what caused it – “I don’t have cancer or anything” – but for some reason, both of his lungs failed.

For three months, Sabates was in the hospital, and for nearly 30 of those days he was in a coma. Talladega was just the second race he’s been to since getting back on his feet. When approached by two reporters before the GEICO 500, Sabates said he’s doing OK but runs out of breath easily.

“It was just both of my lungs failed, and I ended up with double pneumonia, then I developed a blood disorder,” Sabates said.

“My lungs are covered with a film and the best way to describe it is if you take a piece of cellophane and put it over your lungs and punch little holes in it, and that’s all the capacity that I got. Those little holes. So, I have a hard time breathing, but I’m getting used to it, and when I get tired I stop.”

Not only did Sabates miss the last portion of the 2016 NASCAR season, he also lost that part of his life. Asked what was going through his mind during his time away from racing, Sabates said he does not remember much of anything that has to do with his hospitalization.

“I remember coming out of the coma because I saw people around,” Sabates said. “Brian France and Mike Helton and Chip [Ganassi] came down to see me after I woke up, but I don’t remember talking to them. They say I did, but I don’t remember. Then I was in the intensive care for 30 days after that and I don’t remember being there at all, don’t remember anything.

“Next thing I remember when I woke up one morning I was in the rehab hospital, I had broken my leg, to begin with, so that’s what started the whole thing, and when I woke up I had atrophy. I had no movement in my arms or my legs, so I had to learn to walk again and learn to write again. I have a difficult time writing now; I can hardly read my handwriting because my muscles got so weak and the fact that I couldn’t be taking a lot of medication. But I’m 71 years old; I’m still kicking around.”

In typical Sabates fashion, he looked back on his illness with a sense of humor.

“I remember waking up the day after the election (last November), and I asked the nurse, did they have the election yet?” Sabates recalled. “She goes, ‘Yes, and you were watching the results all night long.’ I don’t remember. She said I never went to sleep watching the results.

“I didn’t remember that. And when she told me [Donald] Trump won, I go, ‘Really?’ That’s all I could say. Really? Because when I got sick Hillary [Clinton] was so far ahead at the time. Really? They put a sign over the TV, ‘Trump won,’ because I didn’t want to believe them.”

Now that he’s back, Sabates has a simple thing he wants to see from Kyle Larson and Jamie McMurray, who are first and sixth in the point standings, going forward.

“Keep running the way we’re running,” he said.

Sabates plans on being business as usual, too. With Richmond and Talladega in the rearview, Sabates said he would be at his typical 10 to 12 races throughout the rest of the year.