DirtonDirt exclusive
Seawright sees success as only the beginning
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt.com senior writer
Sam Seawright (joshjamesartwork.com)
While Sam Seawright’s start to the 2025 season boasts three Super Late Model victories and four overall, the Rainsville, Ala., driver isn't over the moon about the results.
“Not too bad,” said Seawright, who Saturday earned a career-richest $12,000 Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series triumph at Talladega Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala. “A little inconsistent, but ain’t too bad.”
Seawright’s modest self-assessment offers a glimpse into the rising expectations of a young driver. Most Dirt Late Model racers would be thrilled with the level of success he’s achieved over the first three-plus months of ’25, but this 21-year-old racer believes he’s ready to reach greater heights so his pedestrian finishes in the Super Late Model events he hasn’t won are sticking in his craw.
While Seawright has three Super Late Model triumphs — he also captured Jan. 4’s Ice Bowl at Talladega and March 16’s Winterfest at Duck River Raceway Park in Wheel, Tenn. — his 11 starts in the division this season haven’t produced another top-five finish. A seventh-place run in March 14’s World of Outlaws Late Model Series A-main at Smoky Mountain Speedway in Maryville, Tenn., is noteworthy (it’s his best finish in six career feature starts on the national tour), but five outings of 12th or worse point out the inconsistency plaguing him.
Hunt the Front’s Bama Bash weekend at Talladega, a third-mile oval that has been good to Seawright throughout his Dirt Late Model career, might have been the breakthrough to get him off the roller coaster and on a steady path.
“We had been struggling the past couple weeks with some stuff,” Seawright said. “We had redone everything over the winter with some different stuff, so we went back to what we knew worked and Friday night I was pretty good (with a seventh-place finish in the 40-lap opener). I thought we had it all worked out and everything was good (for Saturday), and it was.”
Seawright was flawless in Saturday’s 50-lapper, leading flag-to-flag from the pole position. He called it the biggest win of his career, not only because it was the most lucrative (his previous high-water first-place prize was $10,000), but also because it came over a star-studded field of 53 entries with his crew chief and Baird Seawright Racing teammate Michael Page of Douglasville, Ga., finishing second.
A 42-year-old veteran who is in his fourth year serving as Seawright’s crew chief-mentor, the eighth-starting Page reached the runner-up spot on lap 42 and closed in to cross the finish line a mere 0.221 of a second behind the victor. But while Seawright was well aware of Page’s presence in his tire tracks, he didn’t let the familiar face chasing him shake his rhythm.
“When I seen (Page) on the board I knew it was him because there wasn’t another 18, so I knew he’d be coming up,” Seawright said. “I wasn’t really worried about it because I knew the car was really good. I was kind of just riding the whole time. I knew if I ever really had to go, I could.
“It was one of those nights when everything just kind of worked out. I went out right at the end of Group B qualifying after the track had slowed down and still set fast time, and I was really good in the heat race and just fired off good in the feature and was good the whole time.
“There at the end he (drew close) because (the surface) rubbered around the bottom and I was just kind of pushing the lapped cars,” he added. “But he had started eighth and he passed everybody in front of him. He was honestly probably as good or better than me. It just kind of got locked down there.”
Seawright was well equipped to handle the conditions thanks to guidance and schooling he’s received from Page, one of the Southeast’s top regional talents who has forged a close relationship with Seawright. While still a teenager in need of an experienced hand to lead him, Seawright was paired with Page by his father and team owner Ron. Since then Page, who lives about two hours from Seawright, has spent at least a couple days a week at Seawright’s shop and accompanied Seawright to the racetrack.
“I always knew him and raced with him when I was a little kid,” Seawright said of Page. “I just kind of got to talking to him. He worked for (Georgia driver Tyler) Millwood at the time, and then I guess he left there, probably three or four years ago, and he’s been with me ever since.
“He’s helped me a lot. He’s taught me a ton, like especially about the driving aspect of things, because I’d used to sit on the pole and lead about five laps and then I’d wreck or flip or something. He taught me how to slow down to go fast.
“He’s really good,” he continued. “He don’t probably get as much credit as he probably should, but I’m telling you, if he raced all the time, he’d probably be better than everybody. If it’s anywhere that’s slicked off, like black-slick from top to bottom, you better not count him out because I’m telling you, he can outrun anybody on that stuff.”
Seawright’s technical deal with Page evolved further in late 2023 when Page, looking to reduce his racing schedule with the arrival of a newborn daughter, helped broker a partnership between his car owner, Troy Baird of Savannah, Ga., who over the past decade has fielded cars for such standouts as Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., and Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., and Seawright’s father. A longtime trucking company owner and now the proprietor of Cove 2 Coast Marine, Baird was interested in racing more than Page wanted to and an agreement was reached for Baird and Ron Seawright to pool their resources to field a program that would see Sam Seawright race regularly and Page run a limited schedule.
Last year Seawright maintained a family-owned Rocket Chassis while campaigning a Longhorn car for Baird, but for 2025 a more integrated Baird Seawright Racing effort was formed with only Longhorns in the stable. The team now has five Longhorn machines for Seawright, Page and Seawright’s older brother J.T., who is racing infrequently (his only action this season has been Super and Crate starts at Talladega’s Ice Bowl) as he’s busy working at his family’s excavation business and helping his wife care for 3-year-old and 1-month-old children.
“I’d talked to (Baird) on the phone a lot just from him helping Michael, and we just kind of got talking one day about what we could do (together) and it just started clicking and we decided to do it,” Seawright said. “We just put everything together. We felt like we could make it a better team by just combining it.
“Troy loves racing. He ain’t involved as far as being at the shop, but he watches all of our races and anytime we go to Swainsboro (Georgia), over in that area, he always comes.”
Saturday marked the first time Seawright and Page have finished 1-2 as teammates, though they haven’t had many opportunities for a top-two sweep because Page entered barely a dozen events last year. They’ll race together more often this season, though, because both drivers are committed to following the entire Hunt the Front tour, which is a perfect fit for the pair with Seawright looking to gain experience racing top-notch competition at different tracks and Page desiring to run a modest number of races.
“It’s awesome for me because we don’t have to race every week, so if we have to work on stuff or we feel like we’re getting a little behind, we don’t have to thrash on stuff to get back to the track,” Seawright said of chasing the HTF schedule. “Like right now it’s nearly a month until our next race (May 2-3 at Georgia’s Lavonia Speedway and Cherokee Speedway in Gaffney, S.C.). It just works out good. The payout’s good (including a $50,000-to-win points fund), for the top 10 in points they give you $500 per race so that works out well with the truck (fuel) deal because I have mine and Michael’s car both in our hauler.
“There’s just a lot of benefits to run it. I love it. For the amount of time that series has been going, I feel like it’s a really good deal. They’re always fair, there’s never been a call that’s been like, ‘Oh, man, they’re screwing me.’ It’s just a really cool deal to me.”
Seawright finished third in last year’s HTF points standings while winning twice, at Ultimate Motorsports Park in Elkin, N.C., and Duck River. He’s fifth in 2025 points after four events, 12 points behind leader Zack Mitchell of Enoree, S.C., and he’s confident of his ability to contend for the title.
While Seawright only reached the legal drinking age last Sept. 26, he has nearly a decade of Dirt Late Model racing already under his belt and senses that he’s getting “better and better.”
“I feel like I’ve had speed the past few years,” Seawright said. “Now, I feel like I know how to put it together when I have the chance. I feel like I know what it takes to win now. Before, I’d start up front and then kind of fall back, but I feel like I know the changes I need to make now to stay up there.
“I still learn every weekend going place-to-place, whether it’s about tires or something I did on the car I shouldn’t have done. I feel like that’s everybody though. Like even Dale McDowell and guys like that will tell you they still learn something everywhere they go.”
A focus on video study is helping Seawright on the track as well.
“I do a ton of that, especially when I’m going somewhere I haven’t been,” he said. “But even like this week, every night I watched races from Talladega, and seen what the track does. And I’ll just watch a lot of video as far as (analyzing) them other guys, what they do and how they restart and all that.
“There’s just a lot that goes into it. You’ve got to pay attention to every aspect. It ain’t really just how good the car is. You’ve got to be good in the seat, too. You’ve got to be smart in lapped traffic.
“I feel like we all screw up every night; you’ve just got to limit the screwups,” he added. “Even Ricky Thornton Jr. every now and then will slip up in lapped traffic, but you’ve just got to rebound when you do slip up. You just gotta stay in there and keep giving it everything you’ve got. You can’t ever give up because the track changes and everything.”
Seawright is effectively a full-time driver — he’s in the shop every day and only helps at the family business when needed — but he’s not eyeing a future following a national tour. At least for now, he’s satisfied pursuing success on a regional level.
“Honestly, as far as the national stuff, I don’t care a whole lot about doing that because I don’t like being gone away from home a whole lot,” said Seawright, who is engaged to Livie Smith with a wedding date set for Oct. 25. “I doubt I will unless just a real good opportunity came along from somebody. I wouldn’t want to do it on my own budget because it takes a lot of money and you’re gone so much.
“But I take a lot of pride in (racing competitively). I try my best. I work a lot in the shop during the week. I try to make sure no matter who I’m racing against I have as good a car as them. If I don’t feel like I can win the race, I won’t go.
“I’d probably stay I’ll just race regional (for the foreseeable future), but I’d like to venture off and run more of those bigger races. Like I’m gonna run Eldora (Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio) this year,” he continued, noting he’s planning to enter June’s Dream and perhaps September’s World 100 (his only previous visit to Eldora was in 2023 when he failed to qualify for the Dream. “I really feel (Eldora) fits into my style, when it slows down and stuff, and I feel like a lot of the dudes who run really good there, I run with all the time (in the Southeast). I feel like we can run really good there and turn some heads.”
More specifically, he’ll try to turn more heads at Eldora. He’s already doing a good job of that in his home region as he collects checkered flags in an ever-increasing number of Southeast specials.
“The Bama Bash, that’s one of the races I’ve always wanted to win,” said Seawright, whose upcoming schedule includes Saturday’s $12,000-to-win Scott Sexton Memorial Spring Thaw at Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tenn., and April 25-26’s $50,000-to-win WoO Alabama Gang 100 at Talladega. “All these races I watched people win when I was a little kid, like the Ice Bowl, and now I’m winning ‘em. It’s really cool.”
