I have seen live in person over a decades worth of all kinds of racing at Daytona and Sebring in the 60's/70's. Many I have seen racing over the years that were fatally injured at other races, so I was aware of it, like Fireball Roberts, Ken Miles, Mark Donahue, etc
I apparently did see one race track fatality November 2019 at Sebring. A car driven by a Neurosurgeon from Texas was sharing the car with other drivers. I was in the boxes above the pits when during the race the car, came into the pits with front end damage, The crew made a quick assessment, and the car went back to the garages. A few minutes later the car returned to the track with a new front end and resumed racing. Not sure if there had been a driver change.
After maybe two laps the car re-entered the pits and headed to it's pit stall, the last one on pit road. It was observing a reduced pit lane speed limit. The car however never turned into the it's pit stall, it just came chugging to a complete stop in the middle of the pit road, almost blocking the pit road, the officials, were yelling, It looked/sounded like the driver stopped the car with just the brakes. in gear, and never used the clutch. The pit crew jump over the pit wall and ran out to the car to push/pull it into the stall. Car would not budge even after a lot of effort back and forth by the pit crew. Thinking it was a trans linkage problem? the crew chief ran out to the car and opened the driver's door and leaned in to communicate I suppose, he finally reached over to Shift the tranny himself.
The car's driver never moved a muscle this whole time. Two crew members opened the front bonnet, and one climbed up and was fiddling with the foot pedal area of the car. I stopped taking pictures, something seemed very off and very wrong, Nobody in the sky box could understand the situation, neither did I, but it looked bad. The crew chief went over and talked to pit Steward, and within 2 minutes an ambulance crew showed up, and EMT's extracted the limp motionless driver onto a stretcher, they performed no procedures and drove him less than 50 yards to the track's infield hospital. Meanwhile the pit road was almost blocked as the crew worked and exiting cars were backing up, the pit crew got the race car moved. 15 minutes later the same ambulance left the track hospital headed into town hauling. The neurosurgeon race driver never regained consciousness, it was reported later he oddly died of a brain aneurysm.
However, I suspect he passed doing what he loved, he didn't hurt anybody, he brought the car back unscratched, and he likely was very near death driving down pit road for the last time.
