Lon Bromley, racing safety legend

Sunday, 02 October 2016
Robin Miller / Images by Dan R. Boyd, LAT
Lon Bromley helped shape the best rescue team in all of motorsports 30 years ago and earned everyone's trust in the CART paddock with his calm, level-headed expertise in dealing with trauma at the race track.

Bromley, who lost his life Saturday in a boating accident near his home in Grants Pass, Oregon, was one of the four main figures in the renaissance of racing safety along with Dr. Terry Trammell, Dr. Steve Olvey and Wally Dallenbach.
From the late '80s to 2007, Bromley headed the Horton/Holmatro Safety Team at all CART and Champ Car races and assisted in saving Alex Zanardi's life at Germany in 2001.
"There was never a better match for a person and a job," said Olvey, the former Indianapolis M.D. who served as CART's full-time medical director in addition to his work in neurosurgery. "He was never excitable and kept everyone else calm in volatile situations and he was a leader but not a tough guy.
"There was no guesswork with Lon, and we became a well-oiled machine because of him."
Dallenbach, who along with Carl Horton and Olvey started CART's Horton Safety Team in the early 1980s, was responsible for bringing Bromley into auto racing.
"He was a skinny kid I gave a job to on my contract farm in the '70s, and then he started his relationship with safety when he became an EMT and ran the rescue unit in my hometown of Basalt [Colorado]," said Dallenbach, the longtime IndyCar driver who became CART's first chief steward.
"Then in the '80s I asked him if he wanted to get involved in the CART safety team and he wound up being in charge of it and became one of the top guys in all of safety."

Bromley (pictured, standing while assisting driver Michael Greenfield) and Dave Hollander commanded well-equipped trucks named Safety 1 and Safety 2 at every race and gave CART drivers a sense of comfort. "When I pulled out of the pits and saw those guys, I always felt better," said Emerson Fittipaldi, who avoided being paralyzed in his career-ending crash at Michigan in 1996 because the CART safety team immobilized the two-time Indy 500 winner after recognizing the extent of his injuries.
But Bromley's and the team's finest hour came in Germany, when they assisted Trammell in saving Zanardi from bleeding to death.

"Lon was the calm, quiet voice on my hip and he had an amazing sense for choreographing the scene and also a great sense of timing, both of which really helped in Germany," said Trammell, the orthopedic magician who still works as IndyCar's safety consultant.
"He was the best scene commander I've ever worked with."

Added Olvey: "Lon always knew where to be and what to do and he never said much at the scene of an accident. He kinda read my mind and reacted."
Bromley, who was believed to be in his late 60s at the time of his death, also got heavily involved in making race tracks safer.
"He took responsibility as well as leadership and he always knew what I was thinking whether it came to cars, walls, debris fences or tire barriers," continued Dallenbach. "He was the first to get to the track and the last to leave and I never worried about anything with Lon. He was Johnny-on-the-spot with everything he did, and he could do anything."

Trammell agrees. "Lon kind of built the whole system of what was needed at a race track."
After Champ Car folded, Bromley became the director of safety at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas, because Olvey was already there and hired him. He loved fly fishing almost as much as interacting with the drivers and trying to make things safer for them.
"He had such a great demeanor and was such a wonderful person," said Dallenbach. "He was like a son to me and this is really a big loss. He was a pleasure to work with and he really cared about what he did, and it showed."

 

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