Despite questions to the contrary, Logan Schuchart is not a brand new man or anything of the sort after his wedding earlier in the month but he is hoping for a brand new Shark Racing 1S to have brand new results compared to the past two seasons.
First, his wedding to wife Summer Small went according to plan, and was a wonderful event.
“Obviously, it was on the night of the Chili Bowl, so we had a lot of phones going at the tables, watching because we’re a racing family,” Schuchart told Motorsport.com on Tuesday. “We still need to watch the big races. It was a great day. We got a little bit of snow just like I wanted and it was awesome.”
And again, not a new man.
“No, no,” he said with a laugh. “I get asked this a lot and I don’t feel any different beyond the ring on my finger. We’ve been together seven years so it was time.”
The wedding was a good palette cleanser after a difficult autumn and winter without family patriarch Bobby ‘Scruffy’ Allen, who passed away on October 5 at 81.
“Everyone’s doing alright,” he said. “There are good days and bad days but really, we just want to take this team he helped us build, because all of this is because of him, and I wouldn’t be in the position I am in now if it wasn’t for my grandfather.
“I would have never gotten in a go-kart or been able to chase a dream than me and (younger uncle) Jacob (Allen) have set the groundwork for. I want to do my best to honor him and the legacy he built. This is our family bond.”
Bobby Allen was literally a World of Outlaws original and winner of the second race in tour history at Eldora Speedway in 1978. He was the 1980 All Stars Circuit of Champions champion. His final win on the Greatest Show on Dirt was the biggest in his career, the 1990 Knoxville Nationals, where he bested Sammy Swindell.
He spent the past 20 years building up this team for Schuchart, his grandson, and Jacob, his youngest son.
Together, Schuchart led the team to a second-place championship finish in 2020 and a million dollar win in the Eldora Million in 2023. However, the past two seasons produced one and two wins respectively. Schuchart has not responded well, in his own words, to the new tires introduced in 2023 and a variety of wicker bill adjustments too.
“Part of my struggles, I think, are maybe me being too stuck in my ways with my notebook,” Schuchart said. “We started to search a little bit more last year and got closer to the right direction towards the end of the year and got there because I was more willing to do things I wouldn't have done in the past.
“But we stated to gain on it and learn our race car and started racing up front with the consistent cars.”
To his point, he started last year with 19 finishes inside the top-10 across the first 20 races with 13 of them in the top-5. They won at Attica but that middle stretch featured eight races outside of the top-10 across 11 races. It cratered his pursuit of a career defining championship.
“We went to Canada and a few of those tracks is where we were started searching a little bit,” Schuchart said. “Sometimes it’s a good thing and sometimes it’s a bad thing to do searching around. We started off strong in Volusia, and we’re hoping to do that again, because Volusia has always been good to us with several little gators and two big gator championships.
“Then we get to theoe next tracks at the beginning of the year, where there aren’t huge car counts or some of the invaders. So I think we got some decent finishes that we wouldn’t have gotten during the summer because we have tougher competition.”
That’s introspection if there ever was, however …
“The guys who run a true outlaw schedule, they can treat a local race as a test session where they try some different things,” Schuchart said. “It’s not going to hurt them as much. When you race on the World of Outlaws, you have to be as consistent as you can every night, and you can’t go somewhere and try something out.
“What was tough is that we go to places where we’ve had success, and we’re still fast, but we need to find a little bit more but if we stick to our notebook, we're racing for fourth or fifth. In my mind, I think I can make that up behind the wheel. I can turn a fourth-place car into a win if I run a perfect race or whatever.
“So what happened, is we finally decided to break that mindset and try some things. We hit on some and we didn’t on others but we had to be in that position if we were going to grow and learn. That wicker bill change did hurt us. The tire change did hurt us.
“I was reliant on the 2” wicker bill for when the track would start to slick off. In 2024, we didn’t have that. So this year, we got that back, and that helped, but I think that season taught me that I needed to get outside of our comfort zone and start thinking outside of the box.”
It will also help to have a full-time teammate on the road with him in 2026. In previous years, the second team car at Shark Racing has run a true outlaw schedule with multiple drivers. Even before Jacob Allen retired from behind the wheel, he raced on the High Limit tour while Schuchart ran with The Outlaws.
Now, Ashton Torgerson will be full-time alongside Schuchart in pursuit of World of Outlaws wins. There haven't been two Shark cars running the full schedule together since 2022.
“I haven't got to work with Ashton a whole lot yet but I’m excited for this year,” Schuchart said. “Jacob and that 1a team will be traveling with us, and they weren’t with us a lot last year, and I’ve missed having Jacob to bounce ideas off of and I’m excited to have him and Ashton with us.
“I think Ashton is a great race car driver. He’s aggressive. You want to see that because it’s easier to slow someone down than speed them up. He’s going to get himself in trouble sometimes because that’s what kids do. I still do sometimes.
“But given enough time and experience, he’s going to do some great things.”
To wit, overall the vibes are good at Shark Racing a week out from the start of the season.
“I feel like we learned a lot towards the end of last year,” Schuchart said. “We have some changes with our team. It’s been a successful off-season. I’m just looking forward to it. We’ve run good at Volusia the last couple of years and there’s no reason we can’t start by hitting the ground running and go from there.”
