Up to 1999 I had been watching various forms of motorsport for a decade or more and I had never seen a pit lane incident where a crew member had their head run over before.
Then in 1999, I was watching a CART racing event, the Miller Lite 225 at Milwaukee. As the cars came in to pit lane the commentator mentioned that for the first time some teams had elected to have their pit lane crew wear helmets as Bell had supplied helmets free of charge to teams for the event.
Michael Andretti's crew were wearing helmets and within moments of the commentator mentioning this, Michael Andretti stopped and had his tyres replaced and was waiting for refuelling to be completed when, through impatience, confusion or malfunction, the car started pulling away before refuelling had finished. This resulted in the "Vent Man" getting knocked over by the car and – you guessed it – having his head run over by the rear left wheel.
I think it's safe to say that without a helmet this man would have been killed.
Even with a helmet he was injured, but he did not have any head injury.
His name is Ty Manseau and this has to go down as one of the greatest coincidences in motor sport.
You can see what happened on YouTube, including an interview with Ty a month after the incident.
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