What are the most common sports medicine issues you deal with on a racing team?
The injuries themselves are your typical meat-and-potato sprains, strains, and overuse injuries. You do have to deal with some impact injuries, but even they end up being the same kind of injuries you have in a typical athletic training situation–fractures, avulsion fractures, subluxation, and things like that. The mechanism of the impact injuries is different, especially with drivers, but treating them is very similar to what you’d find in a traditional athletic training setting. Did it take much selling to convince the race team of the value of working with your performance team? Our initial meeting with John Barnes, the CEO of Panther Racing, was probably the shortest one we’ve ever had. We went in there with a sales pitch about what we bring to the table and John said, “I already know what you can do. When can you start?” After that, the challenge was establishing trust with the guys on the team. We had to convince them we had some insight into how to make them faster or decrease
