racechaseronline.com CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Chase Briscoe may have been at the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series banquet on Saturday night to collect the tour’s Most Popular Driver Award, but he also made a big announcement during the celebration as well. Briscoe is expanding his Chase Briscoe Racing dirt track operation to include multiple winged 410ci sprint car appearances next season, alongside a schedule of midget and non-wing sprint car races as well. It’s an effort that Briscoe described as “all hands on deck,” and has been going on at full song even as Briscoe has been preparing his own midget to race in Saturday’s Junior Knepper 55 inside DuQuoin’s Southern Illinois Center. “We’ve been pretty busy since the Truck season ended at Homestead,” said Briscoe. “There’s been a lot going on around my shop … with expanding the team in a big way. We’re adding two winged cars, two more non-winged cars and running the midget as well.” “It’s been fun; we’re going to be busy with a lot of different drivers, but that’s a lot of what makes what we do at the race track and in the sport so enjoyable.” Reigning Lucas Oil POWRi National Midget League champion Logan Seavey has been tabbed by Briscoe to be the regular driver for both the winged and non-winged sprint car efforts, with other drivers filling the seat as needed when other obligations prevent Seavey from piloting Briscoe’s machinery. “Our main focus next year is going to be Logan,” Briscoe affirmed. “I feel like he’s the next up-and-coming guy, and he’ll have a lot going on this coming year … between running for Keith Kunz some in the midget and then hopping in our winged and non-winged sprint cars probably 40 or so times next year.” “We’ll still have Thomas Meseraull involved with us here and there, whenever Logan’s busy, and I want to try and get Dave Darland to come and run a few races with us as well. It’s going to be a fun year; we’ll have a few seat swaps, but I’m excited about what’s ahead and glad to continue to be a big part of the dirt track world where my own career got started.” Briscoe had high praise for Seavey, who captured the POWRi title in his first full season with the series this year, and is also a former winner of the prestigious Speed51 Open for mini-outlaw karts at Millbridge (N.C.) Speedway. “Logan’s just a good kid. I’ve probably known him for about four or five years now, from racing online with him (in the rFactor and iRacing simulation services),” said Briscoe. “It’s crazy how much now the sim world translates over to real life.” “This year, he got his first real opportunity in a midget and won the POWRi national championship, and he came and ran our sprint car one night and was phenomenal. It was a no-brainer for me to want to get him involved with us in a bigger way.”
Seavey adds a bevy of races in Briscoe’s equipment to a quickly-growing 2018 schedule, headlined by an appearance with Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports at the upcoming Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals in January. But an opportunity to drive for a friend and mentor in Briscoe was something that Seavey said he “just couldn’t pass up.” “Chase and I have been really good friends for a long time, and he’s always said that if he ever got an opportunity to give me a shot, then he would,” said Seavey. “They got the sprint car program going last year with T-Mez (Meseraull) and (Chase) kept telling me as it was building that he wanted me to be the guy for 2018.” “They’ve put everything together really well, with how they’ve gone about getting the team organized. Chase and his dad have always believed in me, and that helps my confidence a lot … because it is going to be a big step for me. I’ve only ran one 410 non-winged (sprint car) race and one 410 winged race. It’ll be a learning curve, for sure, but it’s something I believe I can do and they believe in me … so I’m ready to do it.” Seavey admitted that his biggest challenge next season will be his winged sprint car races, due to the fact that in his experience, non-winged sprint cars and national midgets drive somewhat similarly. “For me, in the short amount of experience I’ve had in the bigger cars, the non-winged sprints and midgets have always felt a lot alike,” Seavey explained. “The transition there isn’t huge for me … the biggest learning curve will be the winged stuff; that’s where I’ve struggled in the past.” And for those wondering what Briscoe’s own dirt schedule will look like next season – amid a calendar that already has a partial NASCAR XFINITY Series season with Roush-Fenway Racing and ten to twelve road course events booked on it thanks to Ford Performance – the Mitchell, Ind. native will continue to compete semi-regularly in his own equipment on the dirt, just as he did this season in between Truck races. Briscoe even added that another well-known dirt track ace-turned NASCAR star may just take the wheel for him in a couple of races next season as well. “As far as myself, I’m probably going to run 20 or 25 sprint car races next year, both winged and non-winged … and if we get the cars built in time, we’ll be down at Volusia in February,” he said. “I think (Christopher) Bell is going to drive it at Volusia, so that’s really exciting for us.” “We’ve got pretty much the best of the best that we could buy, from an equipment standpoint, so my hope now is that the cars run as good as they look.”