Logan Seavey after winning at Lawrenceburg Speedway in October is the USAC National Sprint Car Champion for 2024.
In a span of two seasons, Logan Seavey and Abacus Racing went from being among the newest driver/team combinations in the sport to becoming USAC Career Triple Crown champions.
After Seavey and Abacus teamed up to capture the 2023 USAC Silver Crown and USAC NOS Energy Drink Midget National Championship titles, they added a sprint car to the arsenal and showed no signs of letting up in a historic USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship season from start to finish in 2024.
Seavey of Sutter, California, is now one of only eight drivers who can lay claim to being a member of the USAC career Triple Crown club alongside Pancho Carter, Tony Stewart, Dave Darland, J.J. Yeley, Jerry Coons Jr., Tracy Hines and Chris Windom.
Meanwhile, the Noblesville-based Abacus Racing became just the second entrant to post championships in USAC’s Silver Crown, National Sprint Car and National Midget divisions, a feat previously only accomplished by the duo of Mike Curb and Cary Agajanian.
On his path to a 107-point edge in the final championship tally, along with a $50,000 title prize, Seavey led the points for 42 of the 44 events, a span of eight months and 13 days between Feb. 13 and Oct. 26, both of which are all-time series records for the duration of holding the point lead.
Along the way, Seavey totaled 14 series victories in 2024, equaling the all-time USAC National Sprint Car season record set by Tom Bigelow in 1977. Furthermore, in July, Seavey became the first driver in 39 years to record four consecutive USAC National Sprint Car feature victories, a feat that hasn’t been achieved since Rick Hood’s similarly impressive 1985 campaign.
The 2024 USAC National Sprint Car season was the second busiest on record with 44 events, second only to the 51 held in 1977. During the run, Seavey led the series in feature wins (14), laps led (364), top-fives (31) and top-10s (38).
What makes this season all the more impressive is the fact that this was Seavey and Abacus Racing’s first foray into sprint cars together. Just as their first season in USAC Silver Crown and Midgets wound up, the Sprint Car too resulted in a resoundingly dominant performance and a title by year’s end.
“It’s unbelievable,” Seavey stated. “That’s the goal we set when starting this sprint car team, but we surely didn’t expect it to come in the first year. There’s hundreds of people who play a part in making these things go around to run the whole season, and to come out on top is unbelievable.”
In February at Florida’s Volusia Speedway Park, despite engine troubles and a timely weather delay, Seavey and Abacus persevered to sweep the night and become the first to win multiple USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship features in a single night for the first time since Bud Kaeding at Terre Haute more than 22 years earlier in 2001. To add to that, Abacus became the first entrant to win their first two USAC National Sprint Car main events on the same day since Max Dowker at Winchester Speedway in 1975.
“Heading to Florida, we were optimistic, but wanted to be realistic,” Cox explained. “After two podium finishes to start the season (at Ocala), we ran into engine troubles on night three. Luckily, rain saved us and we could make the engine change and be ready for both races at Volusia to be run on the same night. Without a third engine in the trailer, we won them both after an energetic conversation between Logan and I earlier that day when he said, ‘We are in a hole.’ Well, I said, ‘We are not in the hole. We are standing next to it.’ I will remember that conversation for the rest of my life. It was hard because as a team, we were not prepared as maybe we should have been. We are not the biggest team and likely never will be. We work hard to take the resources we have to make it work. I always say, ‘I don’t want to be the biggest, I want to be the best.’”
With the point lead now securely in their hands, Seavey and Abacus continued their winning ways at Bloomington Speedway, Terre Haute Action Track and Circle City Raceway during the month of May, the latter of which was the earliest in a season (May 23) that any driver had picked up his fifth win of the year since Larry Dickson on May 10, 1970.
Seavey carried his winning ways in Pennsylvania during June’s Eastern Storm by winning at Big Diamond Speedway one year removed from missing out on a transfer spot there. To close out the week, Seavey scored a photo finish triumph over Briggs Danner at the smallest track on the schedule – the 1/5-mile Action Track USA.
Seavey began his streak of four straight USAC Sprint wins at Illinois’ Macon Speedway on the final weekend of June before landing three-straight at Lincoln Park Speedway to kick off July, the last of which served as the opening night of NOS Energy Drink USAC Indiana Sprint Week. Seavey very nearly became the first driver since Parnelli Jones in 1961 to run his win streak to five with the series but came up a car length short to Kyle Cummins at Kokomo Speedway.
Seavey added wins at Lawrenceburg Speedway and Circle City Raceway en route to his first Indiana Sprint Week title. At Lawrenceburg, he started 11th on his way to winning a race featuring seven lead changes among four drivers, tied for the most lead swaps ever in a USAC Indiana Sprint Week feature.
With 13 wins in the books, Seavey and Abacus had to wait another 11 races across 2 1/2 months before hitting paydirt again in October at Lawrenceburg’s $20,000-to-win Fall Nationals, tying Bigelow’s single season mark. Although coming up just shy of the win record, the team was able to clinch the championship one night early in the penultimate round at Oklahoma’s Red Dirt Raceway.
Elsewhere, for the first time since 2012, each driver finishing inside the top 10 of the series standings also won at least one feature event: Logan Seavey, Brady Bacon, Daison Pursley, Kevin Thomas Jr., C.J. Leary, Mitchel Moles, Robert Ballou, Kyle Cummins, Justin Grant and Matt Westfall.
James Esses writes a motorsports notebook for The Republic. Send comments to sports@therepublic.com
