Greatness is measured not in what is accomplished once but the significant triumphs that get repeated and no one knows that better than Kevin Swindell.
For as much praise as Logan Seavey warrants for his race craft, methodical approach and perseverance, this is also a story about Swindell, who is now a six-time winner of the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals. He won four consecutive as a driver and now two as a team owner with Seavey.
Swindell has pursued greatness in everything he applied himself towards.
It’s no secret what happened to his racing career and the challenges he surely faced in reinventing himself but here we are once again, a decade later and Swindell is starting another streak. The 39 is the class of the Tulsa Expo Center.
It’s like no time has passed at all.
“This does remind me of winning the first time as a driver and coming back the next year, facing a little bit of diversity and digging myself out of it, like we did here on Friday,” Swindell said. “I don’t think I’ve ever had nerves but I had anxiety over just letting it play out.”
Like, what do you do when you haven’t turned a wrench wrong yet and the driver continues to execute every single time he is out there?
That is the one element that Swindell says is different from his current streak to the one he has started now. As a driver, he was just responsible for himself, but now his choices have a direct consequence on how Seavey is perceived.
That’s a motivating factor beyond his own ambition, and how does he wrestle with the decision to not touch the car even once when Seavey continues to tell him that there is nothing to change?
“I went through that a lot today and like, we’re on the front row, but I do feel like we’ve been a little bad the past two days but he hasn’t told me once that it drives terrible,” he said. “We spent all week wanting to find more out of the car. We landed on a happy medium when we concluded the race would be won on the curb like last night and most of the week, and we didn’t know what kind of bottom car we had, but it was good enough to stay there when he wanted to move down.”
And to a certain extent, this is also just the right pairing at the right time, too.
Seavey first joined Swindell for the 2020 Chili Bowl and finished 4th, followed that up with a 10th the next year but then missed the feature in 2022. He went on to have his worst career season, failed to win a single race, and was already looking for another Chili Bowl ride with the expectation that Swindell wouldn’t have him back.
That’s when Swindell called just to check in and make sure they were still on.
Swindell brought a brand-new Bertrand Motorsports chassis to the Expo and Seavey dominated in it. He followed that up with USAC championships in a Midget and Silver Crown with other teams, just to turn back around and get another win in this car with Swindell.
“2022 was one of the worst years of my career and then I come here and start one of the best ones in winning the Chili Bowl,” he said. “Won so many races and you come here thinking, when is it going to end, but you keep doing as many things as you can to control what you can.
“Every win is just soaking these moments in. I don’t know if this is the last one or if we can go win two more like Kevin did. I may not have another great season. I may not win another race. You just never know in racing.”
Swindell didn’t even touch this car for 10 months after it won.
“This car is just for fun,” he said. “We thought about bringing it to the BC39 but we saved it. I just want to come here with a bunch of my buddies. The hard work has already happened with this car.
“It got a lot of love when it was built the first time and it’s as nice of a Midget as you can physically build.”
And Seavey is as nice of a driver, both in his stature and personality, as you’ll find. And Swindell is as good in this role as he has been in every other.
The reinvention is complete.
There was a Sammy Swindell era and a Kevin Swindell. There was the Rico, Bell and Larson Big Three era. We have now clearly entered the Swindell Seavey Era of the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.