Bob Pockrass
FOX Motorsports Insider
CHICAGO — JP Kealey just followed through with what his father taught him as a young athlete who played hockey and lacrosse when a flying tire nailed him in the chest during a race two weeks ago at Pocono Raceway.
Kealey, the rear tire changer for Shane van Gisbergen, picked up his air wrench and performed his pit-stop duties.
That was his last stop of the day. A broken rib and collapsed lung made him reluctantly go to the infield medical center and then eventually to the hospital for an overnight stay to make sure his lung reinflated on its own and his broken rib wasn’t in danger of puncturing it.
“Ever since I was a kid, my dad always told me, ‘Unless your leg is broken or something, you better get up off the floor of the ice and get back to the bench,’” Kealey said. “That’s just kind of the standard for who I was, and what my dad instilled in me.
“No matter what happens, you’ve got to make sure you finish your job and then worry about what’s going on later. It was kind of just instinctual. As soon as it happened, I picked up my [air] gun and I knew I had a job to finish, so I went out there, finished it, and then dealt with whatever’s going on after.”
Kealey is back this weekend, ready to work the Cup race at the Chicago street course, ready to change tires for the race favorite in what he hopes is his second win of the season.
“I feel pretty good,” Kealey said. “I can do just about anything other than bench heavy [lifting], but nothing that’s going to affect me out on pit road. I’m ready to go and get after it this week.”
Kealey knows what it’s like to perform at a high level on a sports stage. A Google search for him will bring up highlights of him as a professional lacrosse player. When the league didn’t play during COVID, Kealey was recruited to become a pit-crew member.
He’s been hit by hockey pucks and lacrosse balls. But never a tire, which is relatively rare. AJ Allmendinger had clipped the tire being held by his tire changer when coming in to pit, and he hit the tire — which flew in the air into Kealey, who was running around his car in the adjacent pit.
“You kind of get used to the idea of maybe getting hit by a car,” Kealey said. “I saw AJ blow through his box, and I kind of checked up, because as I was jumping off the wall, he got kind of close to me.
“So when I checked up, I was looking down at his car to make sure it didn’t hit me, and as soon as my eyes popped up to get to my approach to the rear of our car, the tire just hit me right away. I didn’t really have a whole lot of time to react. I didn’t see it coming. I definitely felt it once it got there.”
Kealey said he was happy the tire didn’t hit him in his head.
“When the tire hit me, I kind of knew I broke my rib,” Kealey said. “I felt a pop.
“But the first thing that came to mind was finishing the stop, so I got back out there and finished the job. … Once I found some shortness of breath and was struggling to breathe a little bit, that’s when I knew something was wrong.”
Many of the pit crew members on the elite teams are former college or professional athletes. NASCAR teams like them because they have experience performing under high pressure and the ability to master a task thanks to repetition after repetition in practice — while also being able to improvise in the moment if need be.
Kealey was not allowed to fly home from Pennsylvania after the injury, so he had to drive back to North Carolina. He got the OK to fly to Chicago this week and had no hesitation about going back to work.
When he played college lacrosse, Kealey said he played with a torn ACL and meniscus for eight months.
“It’s part of it, right?” Kealey said. “We’re all athletes. The danger of it’s part of what makes it fun. You take hits in any sport. Stuff happens in any sport that you play. … It doesn’t change anything for me. I’m going to go out there and continue to do my job.
“It’s not anything that’s going to be in the back of my mind. I’m still going to jump over the wall and have the same intensity and same drive to go out there and succeed.”
While crew members wear fire-retardant clothes and a helmet in case they fall or get upended by a car, Kealey knows there really isn’t a way to protect himself from a flying tire.
“People have been joking and asking if I’m going to wear a flak jacket, stuff like that,” Kealey said. “But I’m not too worried about it.
“I won’t put anything on that’s going to slow me down. … I’m not really worried about it. It was just a freak accident. I’m going to go out there and just continue to do my job.”
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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