Weisenbach, ICMS Still Focused On Motorsport Safety

Tom Weisenbach has built a motorsports-experience profile through the past quarter-century, and in June he took on yet another significant role. He’s the new executive director of The International Council of Motorsport Sciences (ICMS).

For the past 32 years, the organization has been dedicated to the best practices for motorsports safety through the input of its professionally diverse membership. It has approached racing welfare primarily from a proactive stance through engineering, technological, medical, educational, and logistical contributions.

And the Indianapolis-based Weisenbach is no stranger to the various components of the ICMS. The Ball State University graduate has worked with every major American auto-racing series. He started the Motorsports Safety Education Foundation in 2013, and he was a founding member of the IMIS (International Motorsports Industry Show) that ran from 2009-2012, and was the longtime Executive Director of the Indiana Motorsports Association.

Weisenbach recently sat down with Thoughts Racing’s Susan Wade to discuss The International Council of Motorsport Sciences and its vision moving forward.

TW: The International Council of Motorsport Sciences is an organization that has been around since 1988, created by medical personnel – doctors, surgeons, engineers, educators – who all have the same passion, and that is to find ways to always do the best they can to take care of an injured driver, crew member, spectator, official. If you saw what happened at the Brickyard 400 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with the Penske [No.] 12 car crew member getting actually part of an accident on pit lane, the AMR Medical team was there quickly to service that person. AMR is one of our big partners, members of our organization. They sponsor both the IndyCar and NASCAR safety teams, and they’re all about that safety comes first. Whether it’s how to treat maybe a spinal injury or how to extract a racer out of a car that’s on fire, these are all things you can continue to work at and strive to make better.

Our group of members – which is a very broad group, [including] nurses and EMTS and educators, scientists, and engineers, engineers who are trying to design great devices, like the HANS Device. Where would we be today, in driver injuries and deaths, without the HANS Device? That’s one of the greatest things we’ve ever created. The SAFER Barrier – you go back to what the Hulman-George family did with the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. That might be the greatest safety component ever developed for the motorsports industry [in terms of] how many lives that probably has saved because they invested and created there.

So our organization is a global one. We have members from all over the world. We have an annual congress where we get together and have a lot of presentations, discussions, about the latest studies, research that has been done, always trying to find ways to do it better.

SW: The theory is that accidents are what precipitate changes. I’m guessing that your organization is trying to avoid that step.

TW: Yeah. The ICMS, how we’re different than most other groups in motorsports, is that we’re proactive. We’re not reactive. To your point, so many times people say, “We have to fix this because this happened.” We don’t want it to happen. We want to be ahead of the game. And so our organization, our members, are always trying to think ahead: How can we do it better? What else can we do? What else would make the driver safe, the crew members safe? We are very much a proactive organization more than a reactive group.

SW: You saw when (IndyCar’s) Justin Wilson was killed at Pocono, when (NHRA’s) Scott Kalitta was killed in New Jersey, that some of these things are so bizarre and unpredictable. And it’s hard to prevent what you can’t predict. Does that sort of tie your hands sometimes?

TW: I think so. We know that when a car can hit a wall [while] going 230 miles an hour in an IndyCar or even a stock car hits a wall at 200 miles an hour, it’s going to absorb the energy, you hope, and break apart into small pieces and go flying. But with Justin, we never thought we have a tire come off a car, go up in the air as high as it did, and come down and hit him on the top of the head. You just wouldn’t have ever dreamed of that. So again, that’s where the ICMS and the folks at the FIA have literally created a whole committee on cockpit safety. And that’s why you see in, really, all forms of major motorsports – drag racing has the full cockpit canopy which the Schumacher team started, the windscreen in IndyCar, you have the new halo in Formula One. That’s just trying never to have another Justin Wilson incident happen again. You don’t want to see that happen again. I do give credit to the sanctioning bodies and the engineers and educators and the manufacturers who are trying to create that safe area for the drivers.

SW: Do your members ever have a moment to enjoy a race, because they’re always thinking, “This could happen” or “That could happen,” always anticipating trouble?

TW: It’s interesting. The discussions that our members of the ICMS have after an event’s over is something I’d love to let the fans sit and listen to sometimes, because they just see it with a completely different set of eyes than the normal spectator does. When our members are at a track, they’re not fans. They’re not race fans. They’re working. It truly is their office for the day. [For instance,] Dr. Terry Trammell, a world-renowned orthopedic surgeon who’s at every IndyCar race, an accident happens and before he gets to the accident scene, the safety vehicles he’s in, it’s got eight to 10 video screens in it. He can see every angle of how this accident occurred, so he already has an idea before he gets there about what we’re dealing with and what we’re going to find. And the AMR Safety Team at the NASCAR events and the IndyCar events are the first ones to get there. They’re always there, typically, within 25 seconds. They’re literally the ones who are radioing to Dr. Trammell or whoever the doctor is at the event – because it might be 45 seconds before he gets there – and for those extra 20 seconds, the doctor is receiving information from the first responders. That is very important for the strategy when they all get there and say, “What’s the best way to protect the driver and get him out of the car? Do we treat him before we get him out of the car?” If you look at Tony Stewart’s accident at Iowa in the sprint car or Hinch [James Hinchcliffe] at the Speedway – both had leg injuries [that caused them both to] about lose their lives because of loss of blood. They had major arteries hit. The AMR first responders and the medical teams that were at those tracks did a fabulous job of having a game plan of how to bet treat this injured driver as soon as they got to that car. If it wasn’t for the best instant response – “What’s the best way to treat this?” – they might never have made it to the local hospital, where the surgeries were done to save their lives. That first responder is so critical, So it’s really neat to hear our members, the first responders, the EMTS we have as members, when they’re just telling stories of “We had this situation, and this is what we did . . .” And another one says, “We had something like that, too, and we tried this . . .” It’s that constant sharing of information and knowledge that’s so critical. And that’s we have to as the ICMS . . . I want to see us do a better job of pushing out our knowledge and our research to all forms of motorsports, from the local weekly series to the top levels. It really should be for everybody.

SW: I think the problem across all levels of motorsports is that the industry is so fractured. Stock cars have more than a dozen series. Open-wheel racing has a number of series. Drag racing and sprint cars and dirt cars have multiple series.

TW: It is. That is definitely true. What I see is that we have so many racetracks in this country – and we’re a global organization, so think about that – but how many of those just have their local EMTs sitting in an ambulance in case somebody gets hurt. At that Friday night show or Saturday show or Sunday show, they don’t have well-trained motorsports medical people. [The medical people there] don’t know about our research and studies our organization has done or maybe the best way to treat an injury that maybe they’ll have to deal with at their racetrack that night. It’s just a local, small-town EMTs. That’s always concerning to me. That EMT, what training has he really had? What training did you go to to be an EMT? I’m not knocking [any small town] – I’m just asking that question. I doubt it’s the same amount of training that maybe the NHRA Safety Safari has or the NASCR and IndyCar AMR Safety Team has. Those guys are always going through training on best ways to handle an incident and protect a driver or injured crew member or injured official or even an injured fan.

SW: And often these aren’t garden-variety injuries. Motorsports sees really specific types of injuries that other activities might not.

TW: One of the things I want us to focus some more efforts on is training and sharing our information with the local short track’s fire and medical teams. I went to about 25 races last year at short tracks throughout Indiana and the Midwest. And I would always go early and see the local paramedic/EMT/ambulance guys hanging around before anybody else was even there. And I would always ask the question, “Hey, man, I’m from out of town. What type of race cars are we running tonight?” And if they knew – if they knew . . . most of the time they didn’t know – I would follow up with, “Those guys run on gasoline or methanol or just what do they run on?” And they would have no idea. If it’s a methanol or ethanol fire, it’s completely different than a gasoline fire. You cannot see methanol and ethanol when it’s burning. If you are working at a track that has a sprint car that’s running methanol or ethanol and your fire crew doesn’t know that, now you’re putting their lives in danger. And that’s a problem. I have a real issue with that. Shame on the track promoter, shame on the track owner-operator. They need to be educating their fire and safety people on the best way to protect themselves and also the people they’re serving.

SW: We had an instance at a dragstrip that was a test session the day after a race. The team(s) renting the racetrack were required to and responsible for hiring and paying the emergency medical personnel. One of the racers walked down to the end of the track to speak with the EMTs, just to get than same kind of handle on how much training these folks had. The racer asked the woman sitting in the truck if she were an EMT. She said no but that her boyfriend was – he was away, doing something else at the moment. He saw neither had fire-retardant gloves or any sort of fire-resistant clothing. To confirm, he asked, “So, you’re not an EMT, right?” She said, “No, I work at the donut shop in town.” So that just proves your point that so often racers are trusting these workers on site and have no clue that what a big risk they’re taking – and the “emergency personnel” also have no clue what they might have somebody dependent on them doing.

TW: At some point, track owners and operators need to be responsible – take responsibility – of making sure the people out there, even if it’s a track rental, are trained. It’s your track, and you need to make sure the people renting the track and working at your track have the knowledge that they need to have to have a safe event.

SW: The track operators know they’re in the loop, but a lot of people forget that’s a big part of the equation.

TW: Very much so. I hate to say it, but when it comes down to somebody, God forbid, would get injured and we’d get a lawyer involved, you don’t think that lawyer’s not going to go after everybody he can? They’re going to be pointing the finger at everybody. And I don’t want to get into the legal side of this. I’m just saying I think its your human responsibility – as a person, as a passionate racing person – you’ve got to want to do what’s best for everybody. And that means having well-trained, educated people at your events, making sure that everybody is protected.

SW: You raised an excellent point: There is that legal aspect of it. Sometimes that actually drives the safety issue, regrettably. Safety should drive itself.

TW: The one thing in my 20-plus years in motorsports that always frustrates me – and it has never changed but I’m not giving up . . . we’re going to make this change . . . Team;s got $500 left in the bank account. And they can either buy a new component for the car that’s going to make them go faster, whatever it might be. They can buy something to make the car go faster, or they can buys something to make the driver safer. What are they going to do?

SW: Knowing racers, they’ll buy the go-fast part.

TW: One-hundred percent of the time, they’re going to buy something to make it go faster because they want to win. At some point, we’ve got to say, “Winning’s important – yes, it is, absolutely. Safety always needs to be first.”

SW: You can’t win if you’re not alive.

TW: You cannot win tomorrow if you’re not alive after tonight’s race. So at some point, we have to make safety our top priority as we’re putting together a race team, a race event, a facility. You’ve got to make safety the No. 1 priority. And after that, yeah, go for the win. But if you don’t have safety No. 1, you might not be able to race tomorrow.

SW: You’re not going to race.

TW: Nope.

SW: You’re not going to win.

TW: Nope. You can’t win a race if you’re not safe. So you’ve got to have safety No. 1.

SW: We know that the International Council of Motorsport Sciences is taking care of that.

TW: Working on it! In its 32-year history, I think it’s phenomenal what it has done. One of the other big challenges we need to focus our efforts on is awareness of who we are, what we do, and why we do it. I think we have some incredible members who have so much knowledge that we need to be sharing. We’ve never really taken advantage of who we have as members, what they know, and shared it. So I’m really excited about the opportunity to work with our members to push out what they’ve learned to help other racers across the globe.

SW: It’s important to remember that you all are not fixated on who gets credit. It’s about results.

TW: Its strictly about results. We’re not for profit. So we’re not funded by big Corporate America and have one brand trying to tell us, “Talk about our helmets or our firesuits or our gloves because it’s the best.” It has nothing to do with it. I’d like to see our members work closer with the safety manufacturers, because they all have great engineers and scientists. We should be working with them. Scientists and engineers should be members of our organization, if we truly all have the same goal and that is to protect the racers.

SW: And you have so many topics to concern yourselves with: head injuries, spinal injuries, orthopedic injuries, burns, you name it. You have plenty of work to go around, right?

TW: There is. There’s plenty of work. And if somebody needs credit, they can have the credit. Our members don’t care about the credit. At the end of the day, they want to be able to say, “You know what? We talked about it last year. We got it implemented at this racetrack, and last week it saved a driver’s life.” That’s all they need to hear – making a difference in racers’ lives. I’m big on saying, “We’re changing lives, one at a time.” It takes an army. We need more people within our group, more members, so we can continue to do research, learn more, and spread what we’re learning. We have to share it. If you don’t share it, it’s useless. We have to share what we’ve learned.

SW: How does somebody who’s already in the business and wants to make that difference become a member of the International Council of Motorsport Sciences?

TW: I’d love for him or her to e-mail me at [email protected]. Find us on Linked In. Find us on our website (https://icmsmotorsportsafety.org/). We’re an international organization. I really want to see us provide more benefits for our members. I think we’re going to do more things virtual today. The age of the pandemic is teaching all news ways to do business. It definitely is [for] us. I’m really excited. Reach out to us. I’d like to share more about who we are and what we do, who our member are. And you can decide if it’s a good group for you to be a member of. We’re talking a couple hundred bucks a year to be a member. I think the value you see is going to be incredible.