It took over a year, and produced an extremely unorthodox path, but Kody Swanson has finally found his way into a Super Late Model.
The five-time USAC Silver Crown champion and three-time Little 500 Pavement Sprint Car winner was ready to try something different in 2019 when he attended the Redbud 400 Super Late Model race at Anderson Speedway.
At the time, he was looking for a pathway that could potentially lead to NASCAR.
The conversations were productive but not immediately fruitful, especially given that the COVID-19 pandemic complicated his efforts less than a year later.
Swanson made his ARCA Racing Series debut last summer at Iowa Speedway for Chad Bryant Racing, but he didn’t quite have the stock car experience needed to fully capitalize on it. There is also a grassroots campaign in Indiana to propel the 32-year-old towards the Indianapolis 500, but that’s extremely expensive too.
He was able to make his Indy Pro Series debut, winning in his first appearance at Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis, and finishing 12th the next week at World-Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.
There have been Late Model Stock starts at Hickory Motor Speedway and Sports Car appearances in recent months, but every experience has finally cleared the way for Swanson to drive a Super Late Model for Platinum Motorsports in the World Series of Asphalt.
“The reason for this car now is that I started racing a Ford GT for Kevin Doran, and he has a long-time relationship with Marc Metz, who is the crew chief here at Team Platinum,” Swanson said.
“So they talk occasionally, and one of the things I’m doing next year is running a pavement Silver Crown car for them, and their Sprint Car for the Little 500, and they knew I wanted to try some new things, and one thing led to another and we ended up here.”
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The extent of Swanson’s stock car experience is his eighth-place finish at Iowa and several starts at Hickory.
So, it’s especially valuable for Swanson to race 14 times in nine nights between the Pro Late Model and Super Late Model.
It’s a crash course.
“For a long time, I raced things that I’ve been used to racing and that Ford GT was something brand new, right? Road course and a different style of racing,” Swanson said.
“It was so neat to be able to come back and race on back-to-back days in the GT to be able to immediately apply what I learned, and it’s the same thing this week. I’ll get instant feedback. Hopefully, at the of the week, I’ve built up enough experience that I show what I’ve learned.”
He’s proven to be a quick learner, especially in the Pro Late Model, having led several practice sessions on Thursday and Friday.
But it’s a different matter entirely once you take the green flag and he’s still learning the nuances of this racing platform.
“I ran that ARCA race cold turkey, and then Chad Bryant let me race the Late Model Stock, and these are definitely more similar to the Late Model Stock,” Swanson said. “But they’re still so different from what I’m used to.
“The Super and Pro Late Model are lighter and more nimble. They’re wider and respond a little bit better, but there’s definitely a learning curve and you don’t pick it up in just the 10 to 15 laps at a time that I’ve been out there.”
Class is in session for one of the true scholars of grassroots motorsports.
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