Shane van Gisbergen’s crew member suffers broken ribs and a punctured lung after tire incident at Pocono: Reports

In a podcast clip uploaded by Skip Flores and the Stacking Pennies Podcast on Instagram, Flores can be seen discussing an incident involving Shane van Gisbergen’s crew during the NASCAR Cup Series race at Pocono Raceway. The video also shows what happened, as a flying tire collided with a crew member.

In the reel, Flores explains that during a pit stop, a tire from the No. 16 Kaulig Racing car made contact with the tire carrier’s wheel and was launched into the pit of the No. 88 car. That’s where JP Kealey was stationed, and he was struck hard by the incoming tire. The impact didn’t just knock him off balance. Here's what Flores said:

“If you watch it in slow motion, you go hey, alright, you got hit with a tire, that’s alright, but when a tire hits John, JP, we’re gonna call him JP, John Patrick, JP for short, when it hits him, it hits his pit gun, and it shoves his pit gun into his ribs and it cracked two ribs and punctured his lung. You know what homeboy did, finish the stop.”

Skip Flores called Kealey the “dawg of the week,” not just for finishing the pit stop, but for doing so in visible pain and under conditions that sent him to the hospital afterward. Kealey remains hospitalized in Pennsylvania as a result of the incident.

Video footage of the pit stop, now circulating widely on social media, confirms what Flores described. JP looks visibly shaken, but he doesn’t collapse. Instead, he gets up and gets the job done before being replaced for the remainder of the race. Kap Houston stepped in after the stop to fill JP’s role.

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“The bumps in this car are crazy”: Shane van Gisbergen reflects on Pocono oval experience

Following a win on the road course in Mexico City the previous week, Shane van Gisbergen returned to oval racing at Pocono Raceway. It marked his best qualifying performance yet on an oval, starting 23rd in the Great American Getaway 400 presented by visitpa.com. That was a tie with his earlier effort at Nashville.

Shane van Gisbergen is in his rookie season in the NASCAR Cup Series with Trackhouse Racing. Although he had a full-time run in the Xfinity Series in 2024, his last outing at Pocono in that category ended with a 31st-place finish in the Kaulig Racing Chevrolet.

Returning in the Next-Gen Cup car this year, van Gisbergen faced new challenges on the 2.5-mile Tricky Triangle. The Kiwi driver noted that the bumps at the 2.5-mile track were especially harsh—particularly through the tunnel turn, which has an eight-degree banking. Speaking to Amazon Prime (via NASCAR on X), Shane van Gisbergen said:

“The bumps in this car are crazy. Through the tunnel, I was struggling yesterday, not knowing what's normal. Felt like it was coming off the ground.”

Despite the track’s roughness, Shane van Gisbergen showed progress. He mentioned that by the end of qualifying, he was starting to feel more comfortable and closer in performance to his Trackhouse Racing teammates.

The weekend’s result continued a recent trend of better finishes on ovals. After a rough start to the season—where he often placed outside the top 30—SVG has finished inside the top 20 in three of the last four oval events. That includes a 14th-place run at Charlotte Motor Speedway’s Coca-Cola 600.

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Edited by Pratham K Sharma