Fairbury Speedway
Alabaman channels inner Midwesterner at Fairbury
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Sam Seawright (16) rolls around Fairbury's cushion. (joshjamesartwork.com)
FAIRBURY, Ill. (July 24) — Who would’ve thought a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner would absolutely pound Fairbury Speedway’s vaunted cushion into submission to win one of Friday’s 25-lap Prairie Dirt Classic semifeatures? | RaceWire
Sam Seawright did it, though. The 22-year-old from Rainsville, Ala., made himself look like a native Midwesterner with a rip-roaring ride to victory around the top of the quarter-mile oval in the qualifying program’s second 25-lapper.
“I’m like Feger Jr., right?” Seawright said with a laugh, referring to Jason Feger, the veteran from Bloomington, Ill., who’s known as the Highside Hustler.
Not long after taking advantage of race dominator Hudson O’Neal’s lap-20 blown tire to pull off a dramatic top-lane assault that carried him past Chris Simpson of Oxford, Iowa, for the lead with two laps remaining, Seawright sat on a couch in his hauler basking in his spectacular PDC debut. He had just rehashed the race by phone with his father and was doing more of the same with his beaming team owner Brett Coltman.
When Seawright was asked by a reporter how an Alabaman had come to run a cushion like he just did to the delight of the Fairbury faithful, he remarked that it just seems to be something that’s part of his racing DNA. There aren’t FALS-like curbs in his home region, but he’s found he has a knack for them, especially this year as he’s made several trips to the Midwest, including a recent stretch on the DIRTcar Summer Nationals.
“The only place we have a cushion even similar to this at all is Duck River (Raceway Park in Wheel, Tenn.), but the cushion at Duck River ain’t near as big as here,” Seawright said. “I mean, that’s a big cushion. I feel like even if you don’t have the best car you could go up there and just get up on the wheel and still win.
“I’ve just always liked that style of racing more than just putting around the bottom. It’s kind of crazy because I grew up racing at Talladega (Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala.) and you mostly just putt around the bottom and you’re bumper-to-bumper. Here recently they’ve got it better and you could kind of start ripping the top there, but this cushion here, that’s the opposite of everything I grew up doing, but I love it.”
Seawright piloted his Longhorn Chassis to the extreme outside of the track because it was his best option for success. He started fifth but ran sixth or seventh for the first 19 laps before committing to the top side.
“I felt like I wasn’t good enough to win in the bottom, and I knew there was a big cushion up there to find a little bit of grip I needed, so I just went up there,” Seawright said. “I just knew that there was grip off of two in the bottom, and everybody was kind of fighting for it, and I knew if I could just get to the top up there I’d kind of be in my own air and I wouldn’t be down there bunched up in dirty air. I was actually better than I could show because I’d just get so bunched up at the bottom there.
“I just kind of went for it up there.”
Restarting third after O’Neal’s demise on lap 20, Seawright found himself on the outside behind leader Simpson in the Delaware double-file formation. With Dennis Erb Jr. on his inside, he figured he had the top to himself.
“Well, when Dennis picked the bottom, I knew he was probably thinking, Protect the bottom,” Seawright said. “I was going to pick the top anyway (if he had been second), so that worked out for me. And luckily it was Dennis because I knew he was going to roll the bottom, and he left me plenty of room up there to just do my thing. And even Simpson, he left me plenty of room and raced me really clean, and that's how racing should be.”
Seawright attacked the thick cushion, bouncing along the curb with entertaining abandon. He wheeled it right by Simpson on lap 23 and beat the Hawkeye State driver by 0.730 of a second.
The furious, race-closing surge by Seawright impressed not only the thousands of fans watching but also some very discerning people: Midwest racers.
“Sam’s impressive on a cushion for a southern guy,” said Feger, the 48-year-old standout who won Friday’s first 25-lap semifeature. “We got to know each other pretty good on the Summer Nationals. I went over there and set his valves for him today. He’s a helluva little wheelman there and it’s cool to see him do that. He was driving his nuts off.”
Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., a three-time PDC champion who won the third 25-lapper, offered his own analysis of Seawright’s cushion-running prowess.
“He just got done with the Hell Tour,” Sheppard said. “It’ll make an Illinois man out of you before you know it.”
Thanks to his aggressive drive, Seawright received high praise from Fairbury’s fans. He sensed the support as he was making his winning moves.
“Oh, it’s awesome,” Seawright said. “I could come off of turn two and I could literally see people (in the stands) jumping up and down on the back straightaway. That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever been a part of. I had to tell myself, ‘Stop looking at that. The race ain’t over yet.’ But I come down the back straightaway and all those people was jumping up and down and I was just, like, heck, I wanted to be up there with them, jumping up and down at that point.”
Seawright found himself swept up in the electric atmosphere of Fairbury and the PDC, an event he’s been anxious to experience in person.
“It’s awesome. There’s nothing like it. It’s probably the coolest place I’ve been to,” said Seawright, who made his first start at Fairbury in May’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned Illinois Speedweek finale but suffered mechanical trouble in hot laps and didn’t qualify. “I’ve never been to the PDC, not even to watch, but I’ve never missed one on video since I was 10.
“I always thought it was awesome on TV, but it’s way better in person. There ain’t no way to explain it really. Like you hear people talk about it and you’re just thinking, Yeah, it’s probably pretty cool. But until you’re here there’s no way of understanding how awesome this place is. You could about hear the crowd over the motor going down the back straightaway. It's awesome.
“I was pumped up under caution because you can see they’re up there just pumping you up.”
Seawright, who will redraw for a top-four starting spot in Saturday’s 100-lap, $50,000-to-win PDC finale, knows he’ll have to alter his approach over the long distance if he expects to find success. But Friday’s short sprint allowed him to throw himself at Fairbury’s cushion.
“I feel like just naturally, being from the South, I can kind of roll around the middle better and not be against the cushion,” said Seawright, whose four feature wins this season included January’s Ice Bowl at Talladega and a career-first Summer Nationals triumph on June 29 at Camden (Tenn.) Speedway. “Maybe that’s what we need to do, kind of set up to roll the middle and not have to rely on that cushion, because obviously you couldn’t do that for 100 laps. If we’d had another couple laps, I might have drove out of here.
“But after I got to the lead, I wasn’t going to lose from under-driving,” he added. “I was going to give it everything I had. If they passed me in the bottom, you know, they earned it, because I was just up there giving it.”
