“At 11a.m. on the day of the race I offered Logan $5,000 if he won,” Rodela said. “With the most confidence that I had seen in Logan all year, he said, ‘I am going to win tonight.’ It was now up to me to make the car capable of such a feat.”
“It meant a lot to me from the standpoint it was the 80th running and it was at Ventura and on the dirt,” Malloy said. “We pushed the winning car into my museum just as it left the race track, dirty, and all, because it was that special.”
For his part Rodela said, “To me the Turkey Night Grand Prix is the Indy 500. I consider it the most special midget race on the planet. In 20 years of racing, this has always remained the same for me. For Tom and me it is a night we will never forget. To be honest the reason we race in Indiana all year is to have a better chance of winning the Turkey Night Grand Prix.”
Seavey knew this was a win that would stand out on his résumé, but he also realized it was even more meaningful than that.
“It was huge,” he said. “Being a California boy with an all-California team winning the race was one of the coolest nights ever. That is Tom Malloy’s Indy 500, so to win the race for him was something very special.”
Justin Grant, another California driver, won the race last year.
“Winning the Turkey Night Grand Prix was a huge moment for me,” he said. “Growing up in California as a short-track fan, it was one of the biggest events, if not the biggest event of the year. It is a race I went to with my dad. We sat in the stands watching the stars compete, then we started to hang out in the pits to get a little closer to the action. Later, we attempted to make the race with our small operation and weren’t able to.”
Grant, one of the true stars of USAC racing, was ready to take the trophy and when he did, it was everything he thought it would be.
“To come back to California and stand on the podium at that event was more than just a race win for me. It was validation of everything I had worked for and everything my family sacrificed to get me started in the sport,” Grant said.
Many were stunned and dismayed when the Turkey Night Grand Prix was moved from Thanksgiving night. Looking at the difference in the crowd suggests it may have been a move that was long overdue.
According to Agajanian Jr., it wasn’t an easy decision, and it came down to a classic battle between the matters of the heart and pragmatism.
“That was a long discussion and it took years to make that move,” he said. “Cary and I are traditionalists. My father was a traditionalist. He didn’t want to move it off Thanksgiving night even though people would tell him they wanted to have dinner with the family. Then, the first night we changed the day the grandstands were packed. I think right then we decided it was the right thing to do.”
Naylor is as old-school as they come, but he has no second thoughts about the decision.
“It needed to be moved years ago,” he said. “Because the person who really runs the household is the wife or mother and she was already unhappy because she had lost Thanksgiving dinner after COVID. How do you think she is going to feel about losing it again because of the Turkey Night Grand Prix? I told Cary I thought it was the time to move it to Friday and Saturday. There was a lot of push back as you can imagine, and some said it must be on Thanksgiving. No, it doesn’t.”
What everyone can agree on is that the legacy of J.C. Agajanian and the Agajanian family remains intact. To ensure that, there was one other break from the past.
“Two years in a row a fan came out of the stands and said, ‘You know you ought to make this race 98 laps in honor of your dad,’” Agajanian Jr. recalled. “I don’t know his name, but I went to USAC, and they thought it was a great idea. Then, I went to the drivers and to a person they said, ‘I don’t care if it is 98 laps or 100 laps as long as I’m leading the last lap.’”
What remains clear is that to lead that last lap is as important today as it was in 1934.
This story appeared in the Nov 15, 2023 edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
