SPEEDWAY, Ind. — When you become the first driver to win all three USAC National dirt finales in a season, odds are you have momentum on your side as you move into the new year.
Logan Seavey hopes that momentum will be on his side as he plans to race all 99 USAC National events in 2022 as a Triple Crown contender for the USAC Silver Crown, AMSOIL National Sprint Car and NOS Energy Drink National Midget championships.
The Sutter, Calif. driver returns to all three of the same rides this season — the Rice Motorsports No. 222 Silver Crown car, the Baldwin-Fox Racing No. 5 sprint car and the Tom Malloy No. 25 midget.
The same teams bring the same plans and the same outlooks – to win races and compete for championships, and that’s just what Seavey intends to do.
“I’m just excited I won’t have to mount any new seats this year,” laughed Seavey. “I’m small, so I’ve got to get all these different spacers, drill all these holes. It’s simple for the bigger guys, they just mount the seat as far back as they can. For me, I’ve got to be able to reach the steering wheel and whatnot. I don’t have to mount any new seats and I get to work with the same group of people pretty much for all three classes.”
Seavey has a pair of USAC National championship celebrations under his belt — in two different manners. In 2018, he became just the third rookie driver ever to capture the USAC National Midget driving title. In 2021, his performances netted him the runner-up position in the USAC Silver Crown driver standings, but it was good enough to earn his Rice Motorsports team the series owners championship.
Seavey realizes the sacrifices it requires to earn a championship at this level – to have the right teams, the right equipment and the right people.
“It’s hard as it ever is to win one, let alone two or three,” Seavey said. “There’s been a big extra payout put up this year, so we’re all trying to win at least a couple championships and pick up that extra money.”
The USAC Triple Crown payout provides a driver with a $300,000 prize for winning all three series titles in a single season or $150,000 for capturing two of the three championships.
Currently, Seavey’s competition for the Triple Crown is Justin Grant, who has also announced his intentions to compete full-time in all three divisions. Seavey likes his chances of being able to compete up front after finishing inside the top-10 of the final standings for all three series a year ago.
This year will mark Seavey’s first full attempt at a USAC National Sprint Car championship. That was the initial plan in 2020 before a midseason midget injury sidelined him for several weeks, forcing him to miss a substantial chunk of the schedule in June and July.
This past season served as Seavey’s best yet with the series, finishing 10th in the standings after joining Baldwin-Fox a quarter of the way into the season in May with starts in 29 of 43 events. He tripled his victories from two to six, highlighted by a three-race winning streak during July’s Indiana Sprint Week.
With Malloy’s midget, Seavey sparked the combo’s first win together in at Lawrenceburg Speedway during Indiana Midget Week, then finished with a bang by collecting the victory in the 80th running of the Turkey Night Grand Prix at Ventura (Calif.) Raceway to conclude the year. Turkey Night was a huge win for the all-California team in their home state and serves as a huge boon going into this season.
Seavey ran the entire Silver Crown schedule, starting all 10 events while scoring two victories— both on dirt (Pennsylvania’s Selinsgrove Speedway and Ohio’s Eldora Speedway).
He made his first foray on the pavement in the Silver Crown series, using it to learn and gather data for this season.
His theme for the Silver Crown races is practically the theme for the season – no holding back. It was in those close, near-win misses with the Silver Crown cars where Seavey discovered he’d been saving a little too much throughout the distance.
“It seemed like every race last year, I saved too much tire,” Seavey said. “I realized I wasn’t running hard enough, but that’s part of the learning process. You can think you’re running hard and not hurting your tire or you can think you’re saving you’re tire, but you’re actually hurting it a lot. That’s just something that experience brings. Every race I learned a little bit more and more and I realized that I was overthinking it which I feel lost me a couple races because of that. I think it’s going to be all about pushing a harder moving forward.”
Seavey’s season begins with the Winter Dirt Games XIII USAC NOS Energy Drink National Midget openers on Feb. 11-12 at Bubba Raceway Park in Ocala, Fla. The following week, at the same venue, the USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Cars are up for three nights on February 17-19. The USAC Silver Crown season opener is May 1 at the Terre Haute (Ind.) Action Track.