Consistent with his operation, Chapple gets help on the road with a revolving cast of characters just like him. These are people who work and have families but, when the chance arises, they are right there pitching in where they can. He gets steady help from Lee Gettys, who regularly travels from his Pennsylvania home to join Chapple at the track. Isaac is amazed at how dedicated Gettys is. “He uses every single vacation day to come on the road and go racing,” he says. “He lives for it and goes as much as he can.”
However, nothing matches the support he receives closer to home, and it starts with his 11-year-old brother Asa. “I call him ‘Asa the Racer,‘” Issac says. “Since he was seven or eight, he would beg me to go to the races and I would say, ‘No, you are a little young.‘ So I made him a deal and said, ‘When you are 10, when you are double digits, you can go with me.‘ He called me in February or March and said, ‘I know you told me I could start when I‘m 10, but when your race season starts I‘m still going to be nine. I‘m not turning 10 until May, but can I go now?‘
“My mom came on the line and said he had been bugging her for two weeks to call you. So now he goes to 80- to 90-percent of the races with me and really enjoys it. I hope he sticks with it. Even if he doesn‘t want to be a driver, he would make one heck of a crew guy.”
Then there is his wife Savanna, a fourth-grade teacher by profession but her husband‘s biggest fan. “We have dated since she was 16,” he reveals. “When I met her, she had never been to any kind of race in her life, so the first race she ever saw I was racing a midget at the Kokomo Grand Prix. That was her first experience. She is super supportive of me. Honestly, I couldn‘t do it if it wasn‘t for her. It is really hard to put into words how dedicated she is to it. I probably don‘t give her enough credit. We are always getting caught up in the heat of the moment. I‘m always working towards the next race. Sometimes you forget to slow down and thank your wife. She does stuff for me throughout the day like running to get parts because I can‘t do it.”
The bottom line is that Chapple is still making it work his way. And, in a sport where sometimes justice is not served, he can now see tangible results from all of his sweat and toil. His story is innately relatable, one that so many in myriad walks of life can grasp. There is no escaping the fact that in racing only a select few are constantly bathed in the limelight and regularly enjoy the complete adulation of the fans. Yet, if you look closely, there are others who are equally deserving of praise as much for the manner by which they go about their task, and their total devotion to get the best out of themselves and the equipment at their disposal. Isaac Chapple is one of those people.