Logan Seavey nearly wins in truck series debut

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ROSSBURG – Logan Seavey made his NASCAR Camping World Truck Series debut on Wednesday night in the 6th annual Dirt Derby 150 race at Eldora Speedway and he nearly pulled off the win.

Seavey, a 21-year-old from Sutter, Calif., started the 150-lap race in the seventh position and by the beginning of the 60-lap final stage he was in the lead by quite a margin.

At the end of the first stage (40 laps), Seavey 6th annual was second behind pole sitter Ben Rhodes. By the end of the 50-lap second stage, Seavey was third behind Chase Briscoe and Grant Enfinger. He quickly moved to the front of the pack at the start of the final 60 laps and had a huge lead of nearly 4.5 seconds at one point. He led from lap 92 to lap 144, but had fallen slightly behind Briscoe and Enfinger when a caution came out for lap 147. The race was forced to a three-lap overtime period because of that caution and Seavey never regained his lead and even fell further back in the page for an eighth-place finish.

Seavey, who was the 2017 POWRi Lucas Oil National Midget Series champion, is a Toyota Racing Development driver for Kyle Busch Motorsports, who made the announcement of Seavey’s NCWTS debut on July 11 just a week before the Eldora event.

“Running the Truck Series race at Eldora for Kyle Busch Motorsports is the chance of a lifetime and I can’t thank everyone at Mobil 1, Toyota and TRD enough for having the confidence to put me in this position,” Seavey said in a press release about his debut. “Not many people get the chance to run stock car on dirt and it’s definitely going to be a big challenge racing something so much heavier than what I’m used to.”

Lead changes and cautions

There were seven lead changes among five drivers in the truck series race. Ben Rhodes lead laps 1-26, then Stewart Friesen led on lap 27. Rhodes took the lead back for laps 28-45. Chase Briscoe led laps 46-91 followed by Seavey leading for laps 92-144. Briscoe then led laps 145-151 followed by Grant Enfinger who led lap 152 and then Briscoe again on the final lap in winning the race.

There also nine cautions for a total of 41 laps, the last one having the biggest impact in the race as it occurred in laps 147-151. The incident involved five cars, the most of any other caution during the race.

The field

There were 32 drivers in the race ranging in age from as young as 18 (Tyler Dippel, Todd Gilliland and M ax McLaughlin) to three drivers 60 years and older (Norm Benning 66, John Provenzano 63 and Mike Harmon 60).

There were two drivers from Ohio. Cody Coughlin of Delaware and Ray Otto Jr. of Columbus. There were three drivers from Indiana including race winner Chase Brisco (Mitchell, Ind.), Justin Haley (Winamac, Ind.) and Ryan Newman (South Bend, Ind.). There also was one driver from Kentucky. Ben Rhodes is from Louisville.

Other notes

– Grant Enfinger, who was the race runner-up, posted his second top-10 finish in two races at Eldora Speedway. It was his ninth top-10 finish in the 2018 season.

– Third-place finisher Stewart Friesen posted his second top-10 finish in three races at Eldora Speedway.

– Myatt Snyder was the highest finishing rookie in 20th place.

– Johnny Sauter leads the point standings by 32 points over Noah Gragson.

By Skip Weaver

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The Daily Advocate sports editor Skip Weaver can be reached at (937) 569-4316 or by email at [email protected]. You also can follow him on Twitter at @skipweaver65.

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