PARAGON, Ind. — After issues during qualifying prevented defending Indiana Midget Week champion Logan Seavey from turning a timed lap Tuesday night at Paragon Speedway, he thought his shot at repeating might be over before it had began.
However, Seavey stepped up to lead his team, bringing the No. 19az Reinbold/Underwood Motorsports Spike from last in the C-main to a top-10 finish.
Seavey came within a whisker of making the feature out of his heat, finishing fifth and missing the top four by one spot. That relegated him to the tail of the C-main due to the fact that he didn’t turn a qualifying lap and the USAC format reverts back to time trials to line up the C and B-mains.
From there, the Sutter, Calif., native got up on the wheel and put together one of the more impressive nights in Indiana Midget Week’s 16-year history.
Seavey drove from last in the C-main to win it in 10 laps, then started 15th in the 12-lap B-main and raced up to fourth place, comfortably inside the top-six drivers who transferred the 30-lap main event.
Again, with no qualifying time to fall back on, Seavey started last in the 22-car field and methodically worked his way forward despite a rubbered-down race track.
Seavey finished eighth and earn valuable points toward his pursuit of a second straight Indiana Midget Week crown. He won the 2019 IMW mini-series with Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports before changing teams during the offseason.
At the end of the night, Seavey discussed what happened to his race car that put him so far behind for the night.
“I think either something in hot laps, or right when I pulled on track for the first time in qualifying, yanked one of our fasteners off the oil line and kinked our oil line up,” Seavey explained. “It killed our engine, basically, with no oil pressure and we had to shut her down real quick. We came back and thought we had it fixed; we changed the oil line and figured we were all good, but when the oil line got messed up, it ripped off one of our electrical lines and it still didn’t fire when we went out again.
“Really, it was just two fluke deals that just killed our engine and didn’t let us run, so after that, it made it really tough because we were stuck at the back of everything possible,” Seavey added. “I thought we might get out of that heat race; man, we were really close. I think we finished two tenths behind Ricky (Stenhouse Jr.) for a transfer spot. But we just had to get back after it after all that to make it in.”
Seavey admitted he was worried about making his way through the C-main after failing to transfer from his heat.
“I knew at the point we came through the heat from 12th to fifth that my car was really good and we were going to be going to be just fine if we could get through in one piece. The C was really the thing I was worried about,” he said. “The B-main, there were a lot of pretty good drivers and it was a little bit harder to get through there, but, I trusted everybody in there a lot and I wasn’t too worried about getting crashed or anybody spinning out in front of me or anything like that.
“After a couple laps in the C, I just rolled around the bottom and got through there pretty quickly, and from there I felt good about what we had to work with.”
Seavey ended opening night 10th in the Indiana Midget Week standings, 33 behind Paragon winner and point leader Kyle Larson. While he knows that keeps him alive in the long haul, Seavey knows he can’t afford another issue-laden night if he wants to secure the IMW crown again.
“Last year we showed up and won the first night, but the second night we ran 16th or so. Hopefully, Tuesday is our worst finish of the week and we can run up front the rest of the nights and salvage the rest of this deal,” Seavey noted. “It’s going to be tough. “You have to run up front every single night. I think last year I ran on the podium every night except for that one night in the middle of the week. This has to be our worst night if we want to win this Midget Week title, and that’s our goal.
“I don’t think it was anybody’s fault what happened there in qualifying; it’s kind of a freak deal, but you always have to be able to minimize those kinds of mistakes and overcome if you want to achieve your goals, and we definitely overcame a lot in this one, that’s for sure.”
Indiana Midget Week continues Wednesday night at Gas City I-69 Speedway, where Justin Grant is the defending race winner.