There’s a long road ahead for Mark Ingersoll, the lead crew chief for six-time Pro Stock champion Erica Enders. He underwent a double lung transplant on October 3 in a Chicago-area hospital. Ingersoll is on the road to recovery and currently breathes on his own. 

Ingersoll managed to mask his medical issue to many outside of the Elite Motorsports compound just by being tough and efficient in his duties until the transplant became a reality. 

Ingersoll suffered from a hereditary lung disease, the same one that his father, Buddy Ingersoll, succumbed to. He 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. 

Until he left for the medical procedure, which, according to team owner Richard Freeman, was five years in the making, Ingersoll was still working on the details with his team. 

“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 didn’t take it up to the starting line, didn’t want that kind of attention,” Freeman explained. “We stayed until he got out of surgery. He was alert and 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 than when he went in.”

Freeman said Ingersoll is the epitome of toughness. 

“The surgery went well, and within a day or two, he started to breathe more and more on his own,” Freeman added. “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 within 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.”

Elite Team Manager Scott Woodruff wasn’t surprised that Ingersoll fought through the battles to emerge on the winning side. 

“He’s a competitor through and through for sure,” Woodruff said. “He’s probably one of the most competitive people I know. It was tough watching him work through the tough times leading to the transplant. You watch somebody progress in a way where, yeah, Denver’s kind of rough on everybody to breathe, and then you get to the point that some of these other races, Mark was up there in the lounge working and dedicated to his passion, his craft, and always hooked up to oxygen making decisions up there in the lounge. And about the only time he really wasn’t was when he left the pit area, to be honest.”

As Woodruff saw it, still being in the game kept Ingersoll alive through the tough times. 

Ingersoll will likely spend a couple of weeks in the hospital with constant care and then have regular monitoring for the next several months. 

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.