“We were so competitive, we wrecked each other a lot,” Logan Wagner said.
Logan Wagner picked up the sport quickly.
“I think just being at the race track helped,” he noted. “I would watch how someone like Keith Kauffman would gain speed at Port Royal. I also had a good setup since my dad had experience in the racing world. We had good knowledge going into it. What we had to learn was how to be successful without having the money.”
In 2010, he won seven of 10 starts and two years later he bagged his first track championship at BAPS Motor Speedway. In 2013, he defended the title at BAPS, claimed the Port Royal championship in the 305 division and earned the title with the Pennsylvania 305 traveling series.
There was also a lot happening in Wagner‘s life away from the race track. After graduating from high school in 2009, he enrolled at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh to study industrial design. He figured out instantly that it wasn‘t for him.
“I decided I didn‘t want to sit at a computer all day,” he said. “I wanted to get out and travel. I considered being an airplane mechanic and I thought, ‘Well, if I am going to do that I might as well fly.”
With his mind made up, he traveled to Florida and began intensive studies at Delta Connection Academy. After completing several phases of training, he became a commercial pilot. Today, he handles a private jet for Bun Air Corp., primarily flying heads of businesses and corporations across the country.
With his vocation now in place, Wagner yearned to take the next step in his racing career by moving to 410 sprint cars. It wasn‘t going to be easy. He made a handful of runs in 2013 when he fitted a 410 engine in his existing car.
“It shouldn‘t have been on the track,” Wagner said with a laugh. “The car was so old and flexed out and the parts were so bad. But somehow we made it work.”
Making it work, also meant an interesting business proposition with his father. One day he asked his dad how much it would cost to rent one of his engines for a night. The answer was $600.
“I blew all my savings and then did what I could do to keep raising money,” Logan Wagner explained. “I cut radiators apart to salvage copper to sell so I could buy my first set of heads.”
Slowly but surely, he built up his inventory and by 2014 he was able to devote all his energy to 410 racing. “I was a diehard now,” he said. “Once you get a taste of a 410, that‘s all you want.”
Trained eyes recognized Wagner‘s talent and he got a ride with Bob Salathe‘s Bedford Bullet Racing team in 2014. Even though Wagner was essentially a 410 novice, the team took on the All Stars and the World of Outlaws.
In August, Wagner scored his first 410 victory at Lernerville Speedway, but may have turned more heads on a night when he nearly shook the racing establishment.
In the third week of September the the World of Outlaws visited Lernerville and Wagner won his heat race and the dash. In the feature, he was running second to Joey Saldana when, “I was taken out by David Gravel. David feels bad about it to this day but, whatever, we were just racing.”
Salathe and Wagner split at the end of the year, but the owner parted with one of his cars that had been mangled. Wagner clipped and re-welded the chassis and working out of a shop near his father‘s house, he set out racing as a privateer.
“When I say I had one car, I really mean one car,” Wagner noted. “We had one front wing, one top wing and we didn‘t have anything else.”
For the next three seasons, Wagner tried to make ends meet on his own. He won at Port Royal in 2015 and he had a particularly strong 2017 campaign highlighted by a win over the All Stars with an engine that was 15 years old. He tried to build a winning program, but it was an uphill battle in a region where the top guns have high-quality components.
“At that time, I was doing everything I could. I was sending out marketing proposals to businesses trying to build a team like Brian Brown has done,” he explained. “From 2015 through ‘17, I had progressed, but now my stuff was four years older and I had to consider if I had enough funds to keep on operating. It was to the point where I was going to have to get something huge or just be out of racing. Then we got a big breath of fresh air.”
John and Pee Wee Zemaitis were veteran Pennsylvania sprint car owners and after the operation split with Dale Blaney following the 2017 season, John Zemaitis evaluated the team‘s future.
The constant grind of the road was losing its appeal. Crew chief Tommy Carl had been an integral member of the team and had worked alongside drivers such as Billy Pauch, Stevie Smith, Bobby Weaver, Danny Lasoski, Jeff Shepherd, Sean Michael, Lucas Wolfe and Blaney.