Had an interesting one while working Turn 2 at Grattan at the August
National last year during the FVee and Chainsaw (F500) race. One of the
leading chainsaws was attempting to dive inside a Vee, there was a wheel
touch, and the 500 went up, barrel rolled, came down on the roll bar about
200 degrees rolled, then completed its roll and wound up right-side-up in
the grass cross-track from the station. I was on blue/safety, my wife
Karen was on phones, and our yellow flagger sprung into action at my "Oh,
sh**" and had the flag waving before the 500 hit the apogee of his flight.
I grabbed the bottle and, as soon as I had a break, dashed across. Driver
was moving, but had a big scuff on his helmet from where it had contacted
the pavement. Flipped the electrical shutoff, and held an open hand in
front of the driver's face for a sec to tell him to stay put while I
signalled across for Ambulance Now. Plan was to then climb on top of the
car and stabilize the driver's helmet to his shoulders until the cavalry
showed up, but while I was giving the signal, he got out of the car and
pulled his neck collar and helmet off. I had visions of his head lolling
off to the side and having a spinal cord injury on my conscience, but that
didn't happen. Quickly shuffled him away from the trackside and signalled
across to Karen to make sure the doc checked driver's head and neck (nice
thing about working with your spouse is that improvised hand signals are
usually understood instantly -- I still had my scanner on with the track
frequency, so I knew she got it exactly). Fire and Rescue showed up and
wondered why the driver was out of the car (Blackie: "You didn't do.." "NO!
I told him to stay put, he got out while I was signalling Ambulance Now!"
"Okay"). Doc did check the driver, who was sore but otherwise unharmed
(and had to buy a new helmet... believe it or not, they were able to repair
the car and it's racing again this season). While we were cleaning that
up, Turns 5 and 8 also had major metal-to-metals, and then a Vee slowed to
look at what we and another Vee launched over him... landing pretty much
where we'd just pulled the F5 from, and then Turn 6 had an incident.
At that point, Race Control threw the checker a couple laps early, to the
general agreement of every worker.
Jim Crider
jac73@dcx.com
DaimlerChrysler <salute!> doesn't have an opinion on turn marshals
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