Once again his father saw an ad at the right moment. Ty Deckard from Bloomington had a sprint car for sale. It was a roller chassis less an engine, but it was a place to start. In one of the most unusual transactions one can imagine, Lincoln had a top-of-the-line tool box and had a tricked out golf kart.
To this day, Chapple seems amazed that his father was able to swing the deal. “It was an ex-Steve Kinser car,” Isaac says. “It was an older car, but it came with some spare parts.” Before you know it, Chapple was headed south to Bloomington with a tool box and golf kart on his open trailer, and later that day headed home with a sprint car. He still needed power, and to begin the process he sold one of his midget motors for $9,500 and put that in his pocket. Isaac had planned to head west and race a midget, and fortuitously had found a -12 head sprint car engine for sale in Arizona.
With a bit of negotiation, he was able to talk the owner into lowering the price to 10 grand, and anxiously looked forward to sealing the deal. Isaac loaded up his midget and sprint and headed to Arizona to check things out firsthand. He liked what he saw, admitted all he had was $9,500, and promised to send the balance after he was paid by USAC for his work in the southwest. The owner agreed to the arrangement.
Chapple got some parts and assistance from local racer Mike Martin, and headed to the USAC National race at Canyon Raceway. He had never fired a sprint car off. It was to be a short journey as his brand new engine expired in qualifying. If there was any good news, at least he was notified that he could forget about the $500 he owed the seller.
He salvaged what he could and forged a deal with owner Jason Goacher to race his sprint car during the 2015 season. Thanks to Goacher‘s helping hand, he was able to put about 10 total shows together and gain invaluable experience. In 2016 he was able to get his own car back together and boldly set his sights on the USAC trail. It was obviously a tall order given his limited number of starts in a sprint car at any level.
By this time he was getting some help from Joe Peacock, a contractor who is the President of CFH Enterprises in Knightstown, Indiana. “He was behind me when I was pretty young,” Isaac notes. “And as Joe‘s business grew, he helped me even more. Since I was a kid my dream was to race sprint cars. That is what I wanted to do, and with USAC. Joe did everything he could to help me do that for my first couple of years.”
Chapple hardly embarrassed himself. In fact, by the end of his first full season he was named Rookie of the Year. What followed were three years of just old fashioned hard work and resilience. He was laying it on the line with his own team going against more experienced hands and well-resourced operations.
What he was also gaining was a great deal of admiration from his peers. Those working in the pits and those who pull helmets on know just how hard it can be, and they recognized how hard Chapple worked to be there night after night.
His results are also impacted by the fact that he races his own equipment. It‘s just a different deal. Thinking about his situation, he observes, “When you are driving your own stuff there are definitely nights where you aren‘t going to take a risk. There are probably times when I should have, but I didn‘t because I pay the bills and I have to fix the car too.”
There was more to his on-track performance, however. He had spent time around people like Bryan Clauson, he had learned from Arizona‘s Mike Miller, and he had spent a lot of time with top crew chiefs. Maybe it is a bit old school to some, but Isaac truly felt there was a right way to race. “Respect has been a big thing growing up,” he says. “You see so many kids in their first year, and after that year is over they have no one‘s respect. I didn‘t want to be that guy.
“I want to earn the respect of other drivers. I raced a certain way for my first year or two until I knew which direction my race car was going. Now I can race people a little harder. I worked towards it, and I was there every week. Now when I get in a pinch at the race track and I see people I looked up to as a kid or got advice from helping me, it makes me feel that maybe I did this right.”
Sticking with it is simply a personal trait. And it showed. Over the next three years Chapple appeared in 95 USAC feature events, including a remarkable 2018 when he started 39 events and was named Most Improved Driver. He was proud of showing up each and every race, and the fact that he only used two provisionals over the course of the year.
“When I did that, it was like mission accomplished,” he says. “And we did it under budget for what it takes to run a full USAC season. We still spent a lot of money, but we were at a third or 25-percent of what the championship team spent.” Perhaps as important as anything that happened is that he nearly won a USAC sprint car race. “I went from 10th to third at Eldora, then a week later I went to Gas City and led 25 laps before a yellow came out and Kevin Thomas drove around me. That race haunts me, because winning a USAC race would mean so much to me. I think about that about every week.”
In 2019 he crossed one hurdle by scoring a win at Southern Raceway in Milton, Florida. “It certainly took a few years to get it,” he says with a laugh. “They say the first one is the hardest, so I thought now here we go. Then I couldn‘t get one the rest of the 2019 season, and then COVID hit and I didn‘t get to race that much.
While he was less active in 2020, he did score two Southern States Midget Series win at Tennessee‘s Mountain View Raceway in a well-supported event promoted by Wayne Davis. His winning midget was owned by fellow racer Chet Gehrke, who is in many ways a kindred soul. “He‘s a hardcore racer,” says Isaac. “I love Chet because he works hard to race. I don‘t know how many times he shows up at a race track all alone, but he is always there and he always races hard.” Perhaps off the radar a bit was the fact that on that weekend he also had two podium finishes in the sprint car against stout competition.
By the time the 2021 season was launched, Chapple had come to a decision. He was still going to race selected dates with USAC, but he was going to concentrate on the MPD Racing Buckeye Outlaw Sprint Series (BOSS). He had lost a bit of funding and, as a near-newlywed, also had to pay attention to his fulltime job with successful USAC midget owner Scott Petry, who also has a very busy excavating business.