The expectation Logan Seavey had for himself this year moonlighting Dirt Late Models for Chris Bragg Racing was logging at least eight races in the fendered discipline.

That came to fruition for the open-wheel superstar who managed to squeeze in nine Late Model events amid his jam-packed, multi-division USAC schedule that’ll again put him over the 100-race mark.

But as the Sutter, Calif., native packed up his equipment bag Saturday at The Dirt Track at Charlotte after one of the most humbling weeks he’s ever had in a race car — midpack B-main finishes three consecutive nights at the World of Outlaws World Finals — he realized that merely moonlighting in the Late Model world makes for tough sledding.

“Yeah, it’s extremely tough. I think we all expected it to be tough,” said the 27-year-old Seavey reflecting on his first Late Model season that produced a single top-10 finish. “I don’t think any of us were thinking we were going to come out here and win a bunch of races in our first few races. Yeah, I would’ve certainly liked to pick it up a little quicker.”

The back-to-back Chili Bowl Nationals winner and newly minted USAC Triple Crown winner has decisions to make regarding his 2025 schedule: Does he chase titles in USAC national sprints, national midgets and Silver Crown again? Will he expand his winged sprint car portfolio? Are Dirt Late Models worth his time?

Seavey answers the latter with confidence: “This is going to become more of a priority for me moving forward, hopefully,” the 2024 USAC national sprint car champion said, adding he plans “a minimum of 25-30 races” aboard the Chris Bragg-owned No. 51 Longhorn Chassis in 2025.

The driver who envisions a future in Dirt Late Model racing isn't thinking small.

“That’d be the goal next year, if I can do 25-30, or even 40 races, I’d be really, really happy with that,” Seavey said. “Luckily, there’s so many Late Models in the country, you can pretty much race anywhere. The schedules are pretty wide-ranging and I don’t see why we can’t fit a bunch of races in there.”

With the Braggs in his corner — veteran driver Chris and his son, Tyler, a former crewman of Jonathan Davenport’s — plus consultant Vinny Guliani, the bottom line is Seavey and his team “don’t see why we can’t have success. I just have to get more consistent.”

“I would love to do this more, and doing this more requires cutting down some other racing,” Seavey said. “We’ll wait for the schedules to come out and I’ll start putting mine together and seeing where these guys want to race, and what makes sense for them and what makes sense for us doing this as a whole. This season was figuring out what it takes and what we want to do moving forward. I think we all kind of agree we have to do more to make it make sense for everybody.”

Because Seavey’s deal with Chris Bragg came together in late February, it was “too late to really make any real Late Model plans because my schedule was already pretty packed.”

Considering their struggles at Charlotte — 11th, sixth and seventh falling far short of transferring from B-mains — Seavey and the Braggs agreed that if they’re partnering 2025, they must race more.

Seavey had been on a four-month hiatus from the fendered discipline before the rude-awakening at World Finals where he timed 27th and 20th among 33-car, split-group qualifying groups on the World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series.

Hist best runs came while stringing together six races over three weeks in July, posting personal bests of eighth on July 21 at Clay County Fair Speedway in Spencer, Iowa, and 12th on July 22 at Davenport (Iowa) Speedway.

What Charlotte taught Seavey is that long layoffs “are like starting all over again,” not boding well for him nor the Bragg team.

“I think that’s why it takes me so long" to get acclimated again, he said. “I felt like in (Saturday’s) B-main I felt like I was going OK, and that was 60 or 70 laps into the weekend or maybe a little more than that,” Seavey said. “Yeah, over the middle of the summer I felt like I could get it going and make features, and not run B-mains. I was running 30-50 lap features back-to-back.”

One of eight USAC Triple Crown winners to ever emerge from the open-wheel world — championships in USAC national midgets (2018 and 2023), USAC Silver Crown (2023) and USAC national sprints (2024) — Seavey has knack for excelling in a variety of race cars.

Last September, Seavey joined Kyle Larson and Jack Hewitt as the only drivers to win in all three wingless divisions at Eldora Speedway’s 4-Crown Nationals. He won in just his second-ever ARCA Racing Series start and in his first and only NASCAR Truck Series start, he led laps and finished inside the top-10.

Even with that diverse background, Seavey “was a little surprised at how different” the Dirt Late Model felt.

“I wasn’t surprised at how they drove, but I was really surprised on how my current driving habits are perfectly wrong for a Late Model, so everything I do is wrong,” said Seavey, who has very little experience with fendered race machines. “My instincts are just so wrong where I have to really, really think about what I’m doing. Whereas all the sprint car stuff, naturally what I think it is right, is right. And it works.”

On Wednesday’s opening qualifying night at the World Finals, Seavey’s lap of 15.923 seconds was more than a second behind Chris Madden’s fastest lap of 14.785. He was better in Friday’s qualifying session, his lap of 15.056 seconds only a half-second slower than the night’s fast qualifier Bobby Pierce, but could only finish sixth from the seventh-starting spot in his heat race.

“Not qualifying well at a big track with cars that are aerodynamically sensitive is pretty much a death wish,” said Seavey, who added that “when it comes down to racing these, I’m fighting the car and myself.

“It’s not that I don’t know what I need to do. It’s getting myself when I do get in those situations, of getting tight or getting loose, to not do what I normally do,” he said. “That’s pretty much what’s happening. Every time I make a little mistake, it turns into a big mistake. When you have 66 cars here, that’s not going to work out. Hopefully over time I can train myself to hop in a Late Model and know what to do when I’m in those positions.”

Seavey’s interest in Dirt Late Models began during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic when iRacing hosted and streamed invitational sim-racing events under the World of Outlaws banner.

That’s when Mark Richards wanted Seavey, an avid, skilled sim racer, to represent the virtual Rocket1 Racing team in the exhibition sim races, which “didn’t make a lot of sense” to Seavey “because even on iRacing, I wasn’t very good in the Late Models.”

But Seavey represented the virtual Rocket1 house car well and even drove to victory April 2020 at computer-generated Knoxville (Iowa) Speedway over a star-studded lineup featuring Larson, Bobby Pierce, and Ricky Thornton Jr.

“Any time I’d win a race or run good, I’d get a text from Mark,” Seavey said. “It’s cool to meet guys like him. It’s random that it come that way to meet him, but it was a huge foot in the door to an industry that I’ve known nothing about.”

Two years later, at the end of 2022 when Rocket1 Racing program transitioned from Brandon Sheppard to Hudson O’Neal, Richards let Seavey make 20 laps in his iconic house car during O’Neal’s first official test session at Farmer City (Ill.) Raceway. Seavey made enough of an impression on Richards that when O’Neal endured a hard crash Feb. 13 at Volusia Speedway Park and took a trip to a nearby hospital, Seavey was on standby as an emergency substitute driver in case O'Neal couldn't race the following night because USAC sprints were on the undercard at the Florida half-mile.

Seavey hasn’t paired up with Richards for his Late Model foray, but rather landed in a situation he couldn’t turn down with Longhorn Chassis, showcasing his upside when contending for July 2’s DIRTcar Summer Nationals victory at Old. No. 1 Speedway in Harrisburg, Ark., in his debut. Seavey spun out of the third spot with six laps left trying to navigate lapped traffic and eventually finished 18th.

His Late Model finishes before Charlotte: 15th, 13th, 15th, eighth (in a 15-car field) and 12th.

“It was going good there with a few races back-to-back. Everybody was pretty happy. We had good speed,” Seavey said. “And then we come over here (to Charlotte), and with all the emphasis on qualifying, we couldn’t get the job done either day. I wasn’t horrible in qualifying, I just made a mistake Friday. I just didn’t have a good qualifying lap.”

Coming from open-wheel cars where Seavey’s used to momentum-oriented racing, bullrings are easier for him in the Late Model. Charlotte was his first, true test around a higher-speed 4/10-mile. He considers himself a big-track racer, and his five multi-division victories in 12 starts at Eldora’s 4-Crown Nationals prove that, it’s just a style of racing he needs to learn in the Late Model.

“I feel like the little tracks, you can hustle them and smash them around, and really be aggressive with the car,” Seavey said. “Then you come to a place like this and it pays off to be really smooth and methodical, and to make sure you have your car in the right positions and go around in all the right angles. Yeah, keeping your car at the right posture is super important on these big tracks, and just keeping momentum, and everything else that comes along with big-track racing. Traditionally I’m really, really good at big tracks with the things I do.”

Seavey’s only commitments for the 2025 season thus far are another USAC national sprint car campaign with Abacus Racing, another Chili Bowl Nationals go-around with Swindell SpeedLab-Bertrand Motorsports, and a heavier dosage of Dirt Late Models with the Braggs.

“Now we have races (under our belt) and a lot more time to think about it and look at schedules before the year starts so I can schedule races a lot easier,” said Seavey, who added that “hopefully we can hit a bunch early in the year so we can be fast and competitive, and go run some bigger races and try to compete with these guys.”

“They’re obviously super good and this is what they do for a living,” Seavey said. “For the most part, this is all they do. It’s very difficult to come into their world and beat them.”

Seavey’s unsure about his Silver Crown and midget racing future, saying “I’ll have to talk with my teams to see what they want to do and how much they want to do. Luckily I have people who want what’s best for me. We’ll kind of do what I want to do, I think, and that’s racing more Late Models.”

Given his success at Eldora — “There’s no place I like going to more than Eldora,” he said — he’d love to enter next year’s Dream and World 100, but ultimately “I’ll have to see how I’m doing.”

The Prairie Dirt Classic at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway is another event Seavey hopes to be competitive enough for next season. Seavey wanted to race next Jan. 3-12’s Wild West Shootout at Vado (N.M.) Speedway Park, but he’s going to New Zealand earlier that week and has Chili Bowl commitments the final Wild West Shootout weekend.

“I hope to get there, if next year goes good in the Late Model and everyone’s happy, and if it feels like we can keep going, I would hope to get there in 2026,” Seavey said of the Wild West Shootout. “Obviously that’s pending the Chili Bowl schedule.”

As for the winged sprint car, “I don’t have any plans at the moment,” said Seavey, who added that 410 starts “aren’t off the table.” But even for a driver who “would like to do a little bit everything, but like the Late Model, it’s another car that’d quite a bit different than what I do.”

“If it’s not something you do 25-30 times or more, it’s really tough to compete with those guys,” Seavey said. “It’s similar to this: I would love to do it, but you really have to find something is, first of all, good equipment and fast, and someone that’s willing to go do it with you and learn, and go through that process of figuring it out.”

While Seavey was dealt a humbling experience at Charlotte, he now knows what he needs to do moving forward if he wants to truly be competitive in Dirt Late Model racing.

“Overall, all of us would’ve liked to have more success, especially coming over here to Charlotte,” Seavey said. “This has been one we’ve been looking forward to all year. We were all excited about coming here. The results just weren’t there. I couldn’t be driving for better people. Yeah, excited for the future.”