Good to have a member of the TV crew that can strap into the car if he’s needed.
The NASCAR Cup Series was in Austin, Texas yesterday for the first road course race of the season at the Circuit of the Americas.
And it also happened to be the hottest race of the year so far.
Temperatures in Austin yesterday were in the low 80s, after drivers were treated to highs in the low 50s last week at EchoPark Speedway in Atlanta. And apparently several drivers experienced failures with their “cool suits,” which are basically shirts with tubes in them that are supposed to circulate cold water through them.
We heard Kyle Larson on the radio complaining that his suit wasn’t working – and he was also struggling to reach the straw of his water bottle, which resulted in this oddly sexual conversation with his team:
Throw in the physical demands of driving on a road course, turning both left and right, and we saw several drivers struggle to make it through the race.
After climbing out of his car, the broadcast showed veteran road course racer and driver of the #16 car AJ Allmendinger receiving medical attention before being taken to the infield care center:
The worst situation, though, came from Alex Bowman, the driver of the #48 car for Hendrick Motorsports.
Throughout the race, Bowman complained to his team that he wasn’t feeling well, apparently after also suffering from a cool suit failure. (Not to get too into the weeds, but if the cooling system fails, that means that the shirt is filled with water that’s not being cooled and is instead heating up throughout the race – meaning a broken cool suit is even worse than not wearing one).
A little over halfway through the race, the driver radioed to his team and let them know that he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to finish the race:
That sent the #48 team scrambling to try to find a driver who could step into the car for Bowman to finish the remaining laps. And luckily, they were able to find one – on the television crew.
Myatt Snider is a former Xfinity Series (now O’Reilly Series) driver, who completed two full seasons in the series along with one full-time Truck Series season. But he hasn’t been a full-time driver since 2022, although he’s made a handful of lower series starts in the past couple of years.
Instead, he works as a pit road spotter for NASCAR on FOX – basically, he’s the guy who looks for stories and tracks down information for the broadcast crew during a race. And while he’s never made a Cup Series start, Hendrick Motorsports was able to get permission from both FOX and NASCAR to have Snider step into the car for Bowman around lap 75 to finish out the race.
And in a hilarious text message that was posted by to social media, apparently Snider was even texting his friends for advice on navigating the road course as he was preparing to get into the car:
Ultimately, Snider’s job was just to go out there and finish the laps in case any cars dropped out of the race so that the team could pick up as many points as they could. And while he ultimately finished 36th, Hendrick Motorsports had nothing but praise for the driver-turned-television crew member for stepping in on such short notice:
Luckily both Bowman and Allmendinger were treated and ultimately released from the infield care center, so it sounds like both of them are fine. But man, what a wild way to end up in your first NASCAR Cup Series race.
