Two crew members were struck by a car at the Indy 500 that was simply trying to pit and get back into the race on Sunday. The incident occurred when three cars from the Dale Coyne Racing team were all trying to exit pit road at the same time. James Davison’s car ran into Pippa Mann’s, and that sent Davison toward Tristan Vautier’s pit crew. Not being able to react in time, the two crew members were struck and injured, briefly causing attention to focus on the crew members that were struck instead of the race.
While neither of the pit workers were injured to the point of having their life threatened, one of the crew members struck is still in the hospital as of Monday morning. According to Sports Illustrated , Greg Senerius was actua lly treated at the scene and was told he could go back to work right away. The other man, Daniel Jang was sent to the hospital with a right ankle injury.
Crew member, Greg Senerius has been cleared and Crew member Daniel Jang was transported for evaluation of a right ankle injury.
— Indy Motor Speedway (@IMS) May 24, 2015
While it’s common knowledge that the Indy 500 is plenty hazardous for the drivers, an incident where crew members are struck doesn’t happen that often. One could say that this sort of thing should be going down more often simply because of the crazy conditions of the race and the action that is taking place all around the track. At the same time, it seems as if both men were pretty lucky there were able to avoid even more serious injuries.
When looking at the incident in real time, the reaction is almost certainly that someone is going to be very badly hurt. When you think of being hit by a car, especially one that is built to go as fast as those competing in the Indy 500, its hard not to imagine worse injuries all the way around. When it comes to this kind of thing happening, it seems likely that it could happen again, even if its planned against. Davison talked after the race about the issue saying, “Unfortunately I got sent out there at the same time Pippa was coming and we made contact and it sent us into our second team car. Just a very unfortunate situation.” It’s likely he’s among the most relieved that the two crew members struck weren’t hurt badly.
[Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images]
