TULSA, Okla. — Last summer, Emerson Axsom was scrolling on his phone when he got an Instagram notification.
He‘d received a message. The message wasn‘t from some random race fan or a friend, it was from someone he knew but had never really met.
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The message was from four-time Chili Bowl Nationals champion driver and the owner of the Swindell SpeedLab race team, Kevin Swindell.
Axsom had no way to know it at the time, but that one message would lead directly to the biggest moment of his young life on Saturday night inside Oklahoma‘s SageNet Center when he won the 40th running of the Chili Bowl Nationals, the world‘s largest Midget car racing event.
“Last year (at the Chili Bowl) I ran Keith Kunz‘s personal car. He‘s only won it like 35 times,” Axsom joked. “He told me I had a spot on his team (for 2026) if I wanted to be there, but he wasn‘t going to be crew chiefing my car. So, I was going to need a new crew chief no matter what.
“Then Kevin messaged me and basically just asked if I had any commitments and I said I didn‘t. I didn‘t tell anybody who I was going to be running for. So, I told him no and he asked me if I was interested.”
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Was the 21-year-old Axsom interested? Well, yes, he was.
Swindell is arguably one of the most gifted minds when it comes to racing inside the SageNet Center on the temporary quarter-mile dirt oval built exclusively for the Chili Bowl and its sister event, the Tulsa Shootout.
He won the Chili Bowl four consecutive years as a driver from 2010 to 2013. After a racing crash in 2015 at Iowa‘s Knoxville Raceway left him paralyzed from the waist down, Swindell made the switch from driving to team ownership.
In 2023 and 2024, Swindell won the Chili Bowl as a car owner when Logan Seavey scored back-to-back victories for his Swindell SpeedLab team.
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So, when Swindell asked Axsom if he wanted to race one of his cars at the Chili Bowl in 2026, the answer was a resounding yes.
Emerson Axsom
“He knows that his stuff is good enough and he totally believed in me the whole time,” Axsom said. “It made my job easy to just go out and drive his race car.”
To win the Chili Bowl, Axsom had to outlast nearly 400 competitors during the week-long event. By the time the green flag waved for Saturday‘s 55-lap finale, the competition had been whittled down to 24 drivers who would vie for the sought after Golden Driller trophy.
Included among that elite group were men like reigning NASCAR Cup Series and Chili Bowl champion Kyle Larson, three-time Chili Bowl winner Christopher Bell, 2022 Chili Bowl winner Tanner Thorson, World of Outlaws Sprint Car champion Daryn Pittman, multi-time USAC champion Justin Grant and Seavey, among others.
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Larson, like he did one year ago when he won the Chili Bowl for the third time, lined up from the pole with Axsom to his outside. Larson led the first three laps, but Axsom boldly took the lead with a clean slide job on the fourth circuit.
“I told myself that I‘m not going to race him like he‘s Kyle Larson,” Axsom said. “I feel like a lot of guys, including the national level guys I race against every week, they see Kyle and they almost back down. If it was anyone else, they‘d be raced harder.
“I told myself I‘m going to take the race to him because that‘s the only chance I‘ve got. If I don‘t throw everything I have at Kyle then he‘s going to win this deal and drive away.”
Larson spent the next 12 laps shadowing Axsom, but an incident with a slow car down the backstretch on Lap 16 resulted in Larson flipping his car and eliminating him from the race.
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The defending champion was eliminated, but new challengers were lining up to take their own shots at Axsom.
First it was his teammate, Seavey, who hounded Axsom for multiple laps and on multiple occasions looked like he may take the lead. Each time Seavey would get close, Axsom somehow clawed back ahead.
Then came a challenge from perennial Chili Bowl contender Grant, who passed Axsom briefly with seven laps left before a caution reset the field to the last completed lap, giving the lead back to Axsom.
Emerson Axsom
“I was super thankful that yellow came out when Justin slid me,” Axsom said. “It was going to end up being a dogfight.”
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Disaster nearly struck with two laps left as Axsom missed the corner in Turn 2, opening the door for Seavey to make a move low. Grant also tried to pass them both on the outside but contact with Seavey caused Grant to flip and Axsom escaped with the lead.
The last challenger to emerge in Axsom‘s mirror with Kevin Thomas Jr., who had stormed his way from 18th at the green flag to third for the final restart with two laps left.
Thomas was able to move past Seavey and got a run on Axsom going down the backstretch, but Axsom covered the bottom through Turns 3 and 4 and held on to win the 40th Chili Bowl Nationals.
“I never thought at 21 years old I‘d be sitting here,” Axsom said. “I‘m super thankful that Kevin Swindell message me on Instagram and asked me to drive for him because without him, it would not be possible.
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“That‘s the best race car I have ever drove. I hope he messages me on Instagram to come back next year.”
The native of Franklin, Indiana, could never have known that a simple message on Instagram would change his life forever.
But it did. And now he‘ll forever be known as a Chili Bowl Nationals champion.
“Everything played in my favor tonight. It feels like a dream. It‘s crazy,” Axsom said. “This is, for sure, the best day of my life.”
