When fans watch NASCAR on the ESPN networks, they see pit reporters wearing firesuits as they roam the loud, busy and sometimes dangerous pit area. But few know it was an incident at Atlanta Motor Speedway on March 19, 1989, that led to the reporters wearing that apparel.
Dr. Jerry Punch, now ESPN’s lap-by-lap announcer for the NASCAR Sprint Cup, was a pit reporter, wearing a blue blazer and tie as he performed his duties on ABC.
Richard Petty’s car was in for pit stop when it backfired, igniting fuel that had spilled on the car’s left rear during refueling. The fire quickly spread.
“Suddenly you could hear this big ‘whoomph’ and you could feel the air just being sucked to the fire as it erupted,” said Punch, who was about 10 feet away when the fire started. “The gas man’s wearing an apron, and it’s on fire – he drops the gas can on the ground and there’s fire all over the can and on the ground. He realized it could ignite the whole car, so he then picks it up and throws it over the wall, and then there’s gas behind the wall and it’s on fire where we’re standing.”
Punch, an emergency room physician, and his pit spotter, Nelson Crozier, quickly sprung into action. Crozier grabbed a rubber mat and he and Punch wrapped the gas man to extinguish the fire. Meanwhile, Petty sped away from the pits, and fireman and crew members from other teams grabbed extinguishers and took care of the rest of the fire.
Dr. Punch attended to the injured crew member until paramedics arrived, then attempted to do a report for the telecast. But he quickly learned that the blaze had impacted him as well.
“As I’m doing a report on camera, my moustache that I had back then is all singed, the hair on the back of my hand is gone, my microphone windscreen is melted – it’s just dripping down across the microphone,” he said. “And the sleeve on my polyester blazer is all basically melted into a goo. All you can see is these brass buttons hanging there.
“They had had high cameras on all of this and I don’t realize as I’m giving a report that people in the (TV) truck and people watching back at ABC in New York are just aghast that I was in the middle of this. ABC Sports executive producer Geoff Mason was watching and he immediately called the truck and asked why in the world are our people not in fire-protective gear? He made the call right then that we’d wear it from then on.”
Punch said that not only did the incident lead to safety gear for ESPN and ABC’s reporters, it also led to improvements in pit stop safety.
“We dodged a big bullet on pit road that day and so did I,” he said. “I didn’t realize how much so until later. And to this day, I’m so appreciative of Geoff Mason just stepping in and absolutely making a great call for safety first.”
Jerry Punch as a pit reporter in the 1980s, before firesuits became standard apparel.
