Near the end of an April workday in 2022, the Virginia International Raceway fire and rescue team was notified that a racecar driver had fallen and hit his head just after getting out of his vehicle.
The driver had collapsed while talking to his pit crew, and the response team soon learned that the situation was more serious than a simple fall.
“We were all packing up in order to go home, and we were almost out the door when we heard that someone had fallen,” said Corey McBride, co-assistant director of fire and rescue at the raceway.
One of the ambulances that hadn’t packed up for the day responded to the call, and the team quickly radioed for additional help because the driver had gone into cardiac arrest. This caught McBride off guard because the raceway’s on-site fire and rescue staff typically respond to fire and trauma emergencies more often than medical emergencies, he said.