It feels kind of silly but a lot of people seem to be sleeping on Logan Seavey and Swindell Speedlab as threats to repeat in the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals this week.
The race is known for its betting culture, the numerous pools that race fans participate in throughout the week, and those lists are full of the usual names like Buddy Kofoid, Justin Grant, Tanner Thorson and Cannon McIntosh.
Sure, Seavey absolutely is generating the sort of movement that the defending winner warrants but it just doesn’t feel like enough.
Maybe that’s not even really true, and neither Seavey nor team owner Kevin Swindell are putting a ton of though into what the pools are suggesting anyway.
“It doesn’t bother me, and I think it’s better to be slept on and it’s hard to be slept on after you win anyway,” Seavey told Sportsnaut on Sunday. “Everyone is keeping their eyes on you at least a little bit and trying to get better to come get us this year.
“I don’t pay attention to what people are saying on the internet or anything like that but I’d rather no one say my name and show up and beat them that way.”
Like he said, it’s hard to sleep on Seavey when he is the defending winner but also coming off one of the best overall seasons in motorsports possible in which he won the USAC Midget and Silver Crown championships, the Indiana Midget Week championship and wins in the USAC Non-Wing Sprint division.
You don’t really sleep on that.
It’s an interest reversal of narratives because Seavey came into the Chili Bowl last year with very few expectations to win. He certainly wasn’t on any Tier 1 pool chart last year because he hadn’t won a Midget race in over a year and actually failed to make the main event the year before.
He famously didn’t expect Swindell to even have him back in the car 12 months ago.
Because he won, and how they won it, Seavey actually feels calmer and more composed than he has ever felt in this building. It’s almost like whatever happens, happens after breaking through and having a mega 2023.
“I came off a year where I didn’t really run well and there were so many unknowns,” Seavey said. “We have a brand-new car that had never been on track and so many unknowns with it too.
“I feel like we know more about this car now. I feel like we can be e even better. It makes me a lot more calm than I was at this point last year. Like, by Saturday, I felt calm and confident but leading up to that, I just didn’t know.
“Now I think we’re all calm and it’s just a matter of going out there and doing our jobs.”
Comfort is the word for Swindell, too, who says he is motivated to validate their success from the 2023 race.
“I’m comfortable because I know what we had last year, but the tires are different and that leaves some variables but we’re comfortable,” Swindell said. “We’re just trying to repeat the process from last year. We spent most of Sunday trying to get the motor to run the way we want and little things like that.
“The only thing that’s a little nerve wracking is I don’t want us to look silly and make last year look like a fluke.”
Behind the wheel, Swindell won four Golden Drillers in a row from 2010 to 2013. He says doing it as the owner and mechanic is different, and more rewarding, because he is responsible for more than just himself as a driver.
“It’s different, very different,” he said. “I’m in control of a whole lot more now. I’m still under the same microscope I was as a driver but now I have someone else’s fate in my hands too.
“So, if I look silly, people think (Logan) looks silly too. When I was a driver, I could come in here with a swagger and that’s your only job. But it’s a whole different responsibility when everything on the car, down to the stickers, is your responsibility.”
But like his driver said, they already have the blueprint. They know how to do this and it’s just a matter of doing it.
“We came in last year nowhere close to the favorite,” he said. “Especially with the year Logan had, he didn’t have a lot of momentum. I had never had full control of a team so really, we’re well ahead of where we were at this point last year.
“So really, we just have to keep building, make some speed and the rest of the week will be fine.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.