SPEEDWAY, Ind. — The USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship finally gets back to business this weekend with a pair of visits to dirt tracks on each side of the Illinois/Indiana border.
First up is the series’ fourth ever trip to Sumner, Illinois’ Red Hill Raceway on Friday night, April 3, at the three-eighths-mile oval.
That’s followed up by the 16th running of the Chuck Amati Classic, for the first time under USAC sanctioning, at Indiana’s three-eighths-mile Paragon Speedway on Saturday night, April 4.
LOGAN LEADS
Logan Seavey enters the weekend as the USAC National Sprint Car point leader, and is the only driver to this point to have won multiple feature events after the first six rounds of competition in Florida in February.
Not only that, he also comes in as the most recent Red Hill winner, scoring last June’s main event by leading all 32 laps en route to victory in his Abacus Racing No. 57.
ALL IN
Trey Osborne warmed the hearts of the racing world with his first USAC National Sprint Car win in February at Florida’s Ocala Speedway, getting the job done on a shoestring budget in his own Trey Osborne Racing No. 6t.
His performances through the first six races have him ranked ninth in points, and now he’s set to run the full slate of USAC National Sprint Car races in 2026.
He’s bet on himself, and recently informed his boss that his last day at his full-time day job was going to be April 1. Now, he’s going on the road.
LEARY ON THE RUN
C.J. Leary is set to take on a slate of 30 USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship events in 2026 as the driver of the Fox Brothers-Brayden Fox Racing No. 53, starting this weekend.
The Fox 53 is a legendary machine in USAC racing circles, having amassed 19 USAC National Sprint Car feature victories with team owner Brad Fox winning twice as a driver between 1997-1998 and Jon Stanbrough capturing 17 wins in the team’s historic run from 2006-2011.
Brad and team co-owner Steve Fox’s father, and Brayden’s grandfather, Galen Fox, was a master chief mechanic on the Gohr Racing team, which was a 30-time USAC National Sprint Car winner between 1975-1991 with their legendary Genesee Beer Wagon rides being driven by the likes of Sheldon Kinser, Tom Bigelow, Rick Hood, Kenny Jacobs and Danny Smith.
In 1980, the team won the USAC National Sprint Car entrant title.
SWANSON STARS
Jake Swanson has started his season in fine form aboard his Daming Swanson Motorsports No. 5t.
He won on his second night out on the USAC National Sprint Car tour at Volusia in February and hasn’t finished outside the top 10 in any of his six starts so far, which has him fourth in the standings.
Furthermore, he supplemented his strong start by capturing a victory in the unsanctioned No Way Out 40 at Paragon in mid-March, setting the tone as the series springs forward into April.
PARAGON’S BEST
Mitchel Moles’ lone victory of the 2025 season came last September at Paragon where he won the closest race of the entire USAC national season.
Moles beat Kyle Cummins to the line by .021 seconds in his Reinbold-Underwood Motorsports No. 19az and ended the season with a career best runner-up finish in the standings.
After a bit of a middling start to the 2026 campaign, Moles heated up at the end of his Florida run in February by notching three consecutive top-five finishes. He ranks eighth in points entering the weekend.
TOUGHING IT OUT
In mid-March, Jadon Rogers broke the lower part of his fibula while competing in a basketball league. For most, after this kind of surgery, that would mean some sheet time and recuperation while staying away from race cars or much of anything that involves physicality for the time being.
But not for Rogers. A little over a week later, he was back in the cockpit with the Midwest Thunder Sprint Cars and finished on the podium with a third-place result at Windy Hollow Speedway in Kentucky.
Much like Justin Grant a year ago, Rogers was seen in post-race victory lane photos sporting a pair of crutches.
ONE-ARMED BANDIT
Saturday’s Chuck Amati Classic celebrates its 16th running this Saturday night, but for the first time under USAC sanction.
Ricky Lewis enters as the two-time and defending race winner in 2024-2025. Other two-time winners include Brady Short, Jake Swanson and Chris Windom.
One-time winners are Josh Cunningham, Jon Stanbrough, Chad Boespflug, Shane Cottle, Robert Ballou, Jordan Kinser and Cody Trammell.
Amati, nicknamed The One-Armed Bandit, was a premier sprint car racer who captured back-to-back Indiana Sprint Week titles in 1989-1990 and scored three-straight Paragon track championships in 1988-1989-1990. In 2004, he was inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame.