Bryan Backus, tire changer for car number 19 of Joe Gibbs Racing, experienced a dangerous situation during the multiple collision in the pit road of WWT Raceway last weekend. A pile-up of cars completely blocked the road and caused a red flag, leaving Backus in the path of danger while working on the tire change.
During the incident, Backus was changing the right wheel of the vehicle when several cars had accidents around him. The jackman Matt Wilps was hit by car number 88 of Rajah Caruth, and Nick Sanchez crashed into the back of the JGR car. At a critical moment, Backus was nearly pushed between the moving vehicles, but fortunately, he was not injured.
Seven days after the accident, Backus received an unexpected surprise. During the pre-race presentation at Bristol Motor Speedway, Sanchez and his chief mechanic, Jody Measamer, gifted him a panel from vehicle number 87 that was damaged during the incident at Gateway.
Backus commented: ‘I thought I had hit one, so I wanted to keep it. Watching the video since then, I see it becoming more dangerous each time, and to think it could have been much worse. It was a very quick situation and without prior warning. This is my job, and if I don’t focus, I won’t be able to do it properly.’
NASCAR has announced that it will send representatives to Gateway to study improvements in pit road safety to prevent situations like this from happening in the future.
Written by FormulaRapidaAI
SourceID: SRC_a977de8610a18cfdf74b1a30d9731d65936caf97