PIT SAFETY CONCERNS NEVER STOP
Crewman hit by car Sunday spotlights issue
Although they
FORT WORTH work in two different environments, Mike Lingerfelt and Todd Phillips share an ugly history.
Both crewmen have experienced the biggest fear of workers in the high-intensity atmosphere of auto racing ’s pit road — being hit by cars. Both were struck by their own drivers.
Injuries suffered by Lingerfelt and Phillips illustrate the need for constant scrutiny of safety conditions on pit road. The focus of crewmembers is to complete a pit stop as quickly as possible to give their driver the best chance at picking up positions during the race. Meanwhile, teams continue to balance safety with speed.
In a dramatic moment caught on video, Phillips suffered a leg injury Sunday when Verizon IndyCar Series driver Francesco Dracone slid on a wet surface and hit the front tire changer while trying to make a pit stop during the Grand Prix of Louisiana.
Phillips, who was tossed heels over head after contact with the car’s wheel, needed six stitches to close a leg wound.
Phillips, who said he was “one lucky guy” to have avoided serious injuries, said wet conditions were a factor with his injury.
“There was water running across the track that continued across the entrance to pit lane,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “That’s something that probably will be addressed going forward. But we know there are certain dangers involved. It is what it is. You have cars driving past you at 50 mph, and we’re all out there trying to service the cars as fast as we can. We assume the risk when we go out there.
“We obviously never want to see any issues. Is there anything that could’ve been done there? I don’t know.”
Lingerfelt’s incident was much more serious.
He was the front tire changer for Tony Stewart’s team during the 2000 Daytona 500. As a Stewart pit stop concluded, Lingerfelt dashed back onto pit road to move a tire left by another team to clear the way for Stewart’s exit. Stewart, checking his rearview mirror for traffic, didn’t notice Lingerfelt’s move and charged out of the pit, hitting Lingerfelt.
Lingerfelt suffered a badly broken left leg and was off pit road for eight months. A veteran of 21 years as a NASCAR tire changer, he now works on Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s crew and remains one of the fastest changers on pit road. INCIDENTS RELATIVELY RARE Accidents and injuries on pit road in major racing series are relatively rare, especially considering the danger inherent in the mix of fast and heavy race cars, tight spaces and human bodies.
Most recently in NASCAR, Front Row Motorsports jackman Sean Irvan suffered a concussion and neck and knee strains when he was hit by Mark Martin’s car at Martinsville Speedway in 2011.
NASCAR has addressed pitroad safety in recent seasons. In 2002, it started requiring pit crewmembers to wear helmets. In 2011, it reduced the number of people who could go over the wall from seven to six. This season, NASCAR removed officials from the “hot” traffic side of pit wall and implemented heavier enforcement of rules that limit the possibility of loose tires rolling out of pit boxes.
NASCAR also has tightened its control over when crewmembers leave the pit wall to begin work on their cars, in theory decreasing the chances of a pit worker being struck.
A new video system, consisting of banks of cameras mounted across the track from pit road, is much more efficient at catching violators than the old system, which largely depended on officials working in the tight quarters of pit road.
“The officials did a great job on pit road, but this video thing is Almighty Police,” Lingerfelt told USA TODAY Sports. “It sees everything. Big Brother has got you under his thumb.”
Chad Little, NASCAR managing director of technical inspection and officiating, said the video system had provided a safety boost while also showcasing new technology and eliminating some enforcement subjectivity.
“We’ve been able to improve the safety element of it by removing our officials from pit road,” Little told USA TODAY Sports. “And we’ve gotten more parity for all the competitors by digging down into pit-road rules and using video as we review each stop and removing a lot of the subjectivity. Safety was one of the intentions of the pit-road technology. It seems to have helped clean up pit road.”
Largely because of the all-seeing eyes of the cameras, pit-road penalties have been up significantly in the early part of the season. Through seven Sprint Cup races, there have been 22 penalties for teams failing to properly control tires in their pits.
Stray tires can be dangerous because they can be hit by other cars on pit road and punted into other pits or over the wall into bystanders. Also, they can interrupt — and thus lengthen — stops for teams in the vicinity.
“When a car hits a tire, it’s violent,” Lingerfelt said. “It can go anywhere. You can’t get away from it.”
IndyCar also keeps a sharp eye on its crews, allowing just six people over the wall during a stop. It also started mandating crewmembers wear helmets in 2002.
IndyCar president of operations and competition Derrick Walker did not respond to requests from USA TODAY Sports for comment.
Driver Charlie Kimball, a member of the series’ safety committee, said the Phillips incident would be discussed with series officials.
“It’s on our list of items to discuss internally and then work on recommendations to IndyCar as a sanctioning body,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “We’re trying to improve safety because it has to be better. There have to be better options. I don’t know if there are any easy solutions to avoid what happened, and I don’t know that you can exclusively blame the driver or the track or anything.”
Kimball said the series was addressing dangerous safety violations.
“IndyCar has done a really good job this year of saying, ‘Look, safety is paramount,’ ” he said. “If there are crewmembers over the wall without a helmet, you will get fined. If there’s a fueler fueling a car without his visor down or without a fireproof balaclava (protective head and neck hood), they will get fined. If drivers aren’t keeping their visors down during refueling to lessen the risk of injury from fire, we will get fined.”
IndyCar fined Dracone $10,000 and placed him on probation for six races. The series also levied $500 penalties against driver Marco Andretti for not keeping his visor down during a pit stop and three other crewmembers for similar infractions.
Kimball said IndyCar should possibly explore widening pit lanes or making pit boxes bigger “to try to give everyone a little larger margin.” FEWER PEOPLE OVER WALL With on-track passing very difficult at some tracks, gaining positions on pit road becomes even more important.
Some NASCAR teams say pitstop times are up slightly this season because of the cameras and the series’ stricter enforcement.
“At the speed with which we do things, it’s tough,” Lingerfelt said. “The tire has to be within a step of you. Depending on what you’re doing, that’s hard. The tire can get away so fast.”
He said the absence of officials from the working side of the pit wall had benefits and drawbacks.
“There are less people on pit road,” Lingerfelt said. “But when the officials were there, they had your back. They might see something you didn’t.”
A smaller pit-road population seems to be a positive at most tracks, however, particularly at Martinsville Speedway. The halfmile paper-clip-shaped oval is the Sprint Cup Series’ shortest track and host to its tightest pit road. Pit issues at Martinsville are amplified by the fact that pit road is curved, impacting sight lines for drivers entering and leaving their boxes.
“It was everything I could do to not hit the pit-crew guys that were working (on) the car in front of me (at Martinsville last month),” Jeff Gordon told USA TODAY Sports. “If there had been a NASCAR official there, I would have been avoiding him and possibly getting into the side of one of the other cars coming around me on the outside.
“Especially at these short tracks, I think it’s a big plus to have less people out there.”
Ryan Patton, rear tire carrier for Jimmie Johnson, said pit road was generally safer because there were fewer people in the work zone.
“You don’t have an official out there standing — another guy who could get hit,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s just another body in the work space. Things are a little cleaner because you don’t have extra people over pit wall.”
Patton and Calvin Teague, the rear tire changer for the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team, work together closely to try to keep Johnson’s four-tire stops in the 11- to 12-second range, a task that has become slightly more difficult with tougher rule enforcement.
The safety element, Teague said, is ever present but not in the forefront of his thinking as he leaps over the wall.
“It probably is a little safer now,” he told USA TODAY Sports. “But when we go over the wall, we have a narrow focus. You have to put that in the back of your head.
“If you play with fear, it interrupts what you’re doing.”