(Press release from Bertrand Motorsports)
This week, USAC’s all time Silver Crown winner and #2 on Lucas Oil Raceway’s all time win list – Kody Swanson, announced a partnership with Tim Bertrand & Bertrand Motorsports for the 2022 National Pavement Midget Series at Lucas Oil Raceway. The dynamic duo has a massive 186 open wheel wins, and a combined 22 championships across the midget, sprint car and silver crown ranks.
Swanson & Bertrand will team up for the 2022 season at the four Lucas Oil Raceway events in the National Pavement Midget series. Bertrand, a 10 time Northeastern Midget Association Championship owner may be new to the non-wing midget ranks as a car owner, but no stranger to midgets. His accomplishments include ten championships, eight with driver Randy Cabral, 94 national NEMA midget wins, and 98 overall NEMA wins.
“We are very excited about the 2022 season. We’ve always tried to associate ourselves with the best in the business, starting off in midgets with the Cicconi family, Danny Drinan, Dan Esslinger/Esslinger Engineering, etc.” said Bertrand. “I’ve been watching Kody for years, and have been really impressed by his humble nature, family values, and of course – his tremendous talent. He is undoubtedly one of the best open wheel drivers in the world, in my opinion,” he said.
Swanson, the 2021 USAC Silver Crown champion, and all time Silver Crown winner, has a resume of 88 career open wheel wins, 12 USAC sanctioned midget wins, and three wins at the coveted Anderson Speedway “Little 500”. Known as a humble, family man – Swanson, his wife Jordan, and two boys – Trevor and Adam, are devout supporters of open wheel auto racing.
“I’m fortunate to have been surrounded by great people throughout my career in racing, and I’m very excited about the opportunity to work with Tim & the Bertrand Motorsports team.
They have been incredibly successful throughout the Northeast & the NEMA series, and have established themselves as one of the top teams in the history of winged midget racing. Over the past few years, Tim has demonstrated his commitment to competing at Lucas Oil Raceway, and the dedication to develop his non-wing program into a championship caliber team as well.
I’m thankful for the opportunity to come alongside them, and to join them in their dedication & effort. I’m looking forward to working together more as we prepare for 2022, and can’t wait to get on the track next spring,” said Swanson.
The duo will be sponsored by Bertrand’s company, project44. One of the highest growth companies in the United States, project44 is the world’s leading advanced transportation visibility platform – providing real time visibility to global organizations across all transportation modes (ocean, trucking, air, rail and parcel). During the Suez Canal crisis, as an example, project44 provided visibility to over 250 of the Fortune 500 to track their ocean containers, stuck in the Canal. Project44 raised a $200 million round of funding on a $1.2 billion valuation, from Goldman Sachs in May of 2021. Project44 was also recently ranked #1 on the FreightTech Index, beating out Amazon, after ranking #2 for the previous 3 years.
what’s this got to do with racing in CT?
Christopher,
First, not everything published on the site is solely focused on Connecticut. Second, Bertrand Motorsports is a Northeast based team that has been competing at Connecticut tracks with NEMA for a long time. Third, it seems like the only comments you leave here are one’s questioning why certain things are published here.
Shawn- Will Kody run any NEMA races?
That’s an amazing pairing of driver and team! Someone else to root for in USAC besides Santos! Although he’s my first choice of the two. They’ve been battling for a while in USAC already.
Mr Hawkins , Tim’s father can be seen most Fridays at Stafford speedway and I believe he was the one who got the family into racing , Tim’s mother was a school teacher at Fermi high in Enfield CT. I believe and passed away way to young , so they are a CT family and deserve to be recognized on racedayct.Thanks Shawn
Chris,
I really don’t know. But I’d imagine with the relationship coming together that could end up being a possibility.
The Betrand family is truly a great family and racing is in the blood that is for sure. They, Tim, Todd, and dad Gil are all equally dedicated too top performance I can assure you. A win out at IRP (whatever they call it now) has been a big goal and this makes it one step closer that’s for sure.
Best of luck to the Bertrand organization in the future.
I know the Bertrands are a big supporter pavement midget racing. All the NEMA races I have seen, it is usually a contest between two or three Bertrand cars for the win. Have they ever run on dirt or gone out to the Chili Bowl? I am not sure if you can take a pavement midget and run it on dirt with minimal changes or if you need a whole new chassis. Love to see a few more locals out there to root for.
Thanks all – and I appreciate it Shawn. This year we are competing in the Chili Bowl – sponsoring Sammy Swindell and Logan Seavy with 2 brand new Mopar SR-11X engines.