By: Elite Motorsports
WYNNEWOOD, Okla. (Oct. 07, 2024) – Mark Ingersoll, lead crew chief for six-time and reigning world champion Erica Enders at Elite Motorsports, underwent a double lung transplant on Thursday, October 3rd in the Chicago area. As of today, Ingersoll is breathing on his own but has a long road of recovery ahead of him.
The Elite Motorsports family has started a GoFundMe to help Ingersoll with ongoing medical and care expenses. Those who want to contribute can go here: https://bit.ly/IngersollGoFundMe.
Team members of Elite, including team owner Richard Freeman, Enders, Jake Hairston, Royce Lee and Chase Freeman, and Kelly Murphy were onsite for Ingersoll’s surgery.
“We got to see him off, he was busy giving Chase instructions for the race cars the whole time but the last thing he said was, ‘I got this.’ He was ready for the surgery, he had been on oxygen pretty much 24/7 for the last several months, he just didn’t take it up to the starting line, didn’t want that kind of attention,” Richard Freeman said. “We stayed until he got out of surgery. He was alert, could hear us, but he was pretty heavily sedated on the ventilator. Already, right when he got out, he was on half the amount of oxygen then when he went in.
“The surgery went well and within a day or two he started to breathe more and more on his own,” Freeman continued. “He went off the ventilator this weekend and he was starting to be his old self. Mark has some extended family and friends who he’ll be staying with in the Chicago area to be close to the hospital and his doctors, but it’s going to be a long recovery, which is going to come at a cost. We want him to have the best care and not have to worry, that’s why we’re doing the GoFundMe.”
Ingersoll, who suffered from a hereditary lung disease whom his father, legendary Pro Stock racer Buddy Ingersoll, succumbed too, had been undergoing testing for the last several months to be put on the transplant list. Within 48 hours of being added, Ingersoll got the call that he had a lung donor match.
Ingersoll will likely spend a couple weeks in the hospital with constant care and then have regular monitoring for the next several months.
Elite Motorsports will continue their Mission Foods NHRA Drag Racing Series season schedule with their hometown race, the Texas NHRA FallNationals at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis, Texas, just two and a half hours from the Elite Motorsports headquarters in Wynnewood, Oklahoma.
