Speedway, Indiana (December 12, 2024)………Over the past handful of years, perhaps no short track driver’s stock has risen more quickly on the national level than Jake Trainor.
The 19-year-old Medway, Massachusetts native will now go USAC Silver Crown racing in 2025 for all six pavement events as the driver of venerable Klatt Enterprises No. 6.
The opportunity is a dream for Trainor who burst onto the national scene in 2023 with a victory in the 500-lap Little 500 Sprint Car race at Anderson (Ind.) Speedway to go along with four midget victories at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park over the past couple of seasons.
“It’s awesome to get to drive the 6 car for Bob (East), Terry (Klatt), Dave (Brzozowski) and everyone involved,” Trainor stated. “With all the history there, it’s really to cool to be able to get this opportunity, and I’m super excited to get going with it.”
Trainor’s midget and sprint car victories have come in cars owned by the Seymour family, who have been a longtime mainstays in USAC racing for over a half-century dating back to Boston Louie Seymour who fielded winning racecars for the likes of Rich Vogler, Billy Cassella and Ken Schrader, just to name a few.
Trainor joins the Klatt team after the ride was vacated by C.J. Leary who had driven the car to a top-four points finish with the USAC Silver Crown series in each of the past three seasons.
Attempting to make his USAC Silver Crown debut in the 2024 season finale at IRP for the Pierce operation, Trainor took to the challenge quite successfully, recording a top-six lap in practice before engine problems sidelined him for the night before he ever really get going. The brief taste of USAC Silver Crown competition has only whetted his appetite even more.
“We got a little taste of it and got teased a little bit there last October at IRP,” Trainor recalled. “It was a great opportunity to run for Aaron (Pierce), and I thought we were really good in practice and we would’ve timed in pretty good in qualifying. I felt like after testing, we could have raced pretty good with those guys. I don’t feel like we were far off. After running the sprint car at IRP, and how many laps I have there now, it was pretty much the perfect storm for a debut. I was super comfortable there, and I think we could’ve been good.”
Trainor’s prowess at IRP has already been well established, but now he’ll get the opportunity to travel a bit more and tackle a wider array of venues for the first time in his career such as Toledo, Winchester, Salem and World Wide Technology Raceway on the 2025 slate.
“I’m excited just to be able to get out more, especially with the prestigious USAC Silver Crown series,” Trainor exclaimed. “It’s an honor and it’s really neat to go to tracks like Winchester, Salem, WWT and Toledo. They’re just really cool places with a lot of history behind them. The names that have been through this series and have won at these places are incredible and it’s exciting to be a part of it.”
Trainor is a first generation racer, with his introduction to the sport coming from sitting in the stands with his dad as a six-year-old. Trainor remembers a chance meeting at Connecticut’s Thompson Speedway’s World Series event in which a promotional booth for the Little T Quarter Midget Club was set up in the midway. One thing led to another, and Jake’s father soon sold his prized Corvette, and with the money, purchased a quarter midget, starting him on the path toward a racing career.
After quarter midgets, Trainor steeped into Eastern Midget Association competition by the time he was 11 at tracks based around the North Carolina area, then began with the northeast United States based NEMA Lites series where he eventually became a two-time series champion in 2021 and 2022.
Aside from his on-track duties, Trainor’s full-time job from day-to-day is working on and building race cars out of the Matt Seymour Racing shop for whom he also drives midgets and sprint cars for.
While Trainor will serve as the pavement specialist for the Klatt entry, the dirt driver for the 2019 USAC Silver Crown championship winning team has yet to be named.
The first USAC Silver Crown event for Klatt and Trainor on pavement will take place on Saturday, April 19, during the running of the Hemelgarn Racing/Super Fitness Rollie Beale Classic at Ohio’s Toledo Speedway.
Photo - Jack Reitz
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