The Curtain Rises for TeamSLR at Sebring

Five-Car M1 Racecars Lineup Features Defending Pro-Am Champ Barry Boes,

Veteran Mike Skeen, and Prodigies Tristan McKee, Carson Brown and Corey Day

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (Feb. 19, 2025) – A power-packed TeamSLR entry of five M1Racecars takes to iconic Sebring (Fla.) International Raceway this weekend to open the 2025 Cube 3 Architecture TA2 Series campaign. Leading the way are returning TeamSLR drivers Barry Boes, the defending TA2 Pro-Am Challenge-class champion, 14-year-old Tristan McKee and veteran road-course racer Mike Skeen, who will be joined by TA2 newcomers Corey Day and Carson Brown.

Saturday’s 27-lap, 75-minute race around the 3.74-mile, 17-turn Central Florida circuit is the traditional first of 12 events on the Trans Am Series presented by Pirelli schedule, and it’s one where Boes hopes to build upon his best season-long effort since joining the TA2 ranks in 2019. The driver of the No. 27 Accio Data/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro from Ooltewah, Tennessee, drove to seven class victories in last year’s 12 events, starting with the Sebring opener and including a top overall finish of sixth in June at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington. This weekend marks his sixth career TA2 outing at Sebring with a previous-best overall finish of 11^th in 2020 en route to eighth place in the overall TA2 championship. He finished 13^th overall at Sebring a year ago this weekend. In addition to last year’s Pro-Am title, Boes scored his first career Cube 3 Architecture TA2 Series Western Championship overall victory in July at Portland (Ore.) International Raceway in M1 Racecars equipment. He also scored a fourth-place finish in his No. 27 TeamSLR entry with co-driver Greg Biffle in the non-points SpeedTour All-Star Race July 20 at Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Connecticut.

The young McKee, driver of the No. 28 Spire Gainbridge/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro, will be making his third official TA2 outing after closing out 2024 competing in back-to-back events at Virginia International Raceway (VIR) in Alton, and the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas. A Chevrolet development driver, McKee got his first taste of TA2 competition at the age of 13 when he co-drove a TeamSLR M1 Racecars entry with his Team Chevrolet mentor Scott Speed in July’s exhibition All-Star Race at Lime Rock. After turning 14 on Aug. 3, McKee became eligible to compete in officially sanctioned TA2 events and promptly turned in a solid performance at VIR, where he qualified sixth and held position among the leaders en route to a fourth-place finish, just .7 of a second behind the final podium position. At the COTA season finale, McKee was racing for another top-five finish when a cut tire dropped him to the back of the field. He rallied from 37^th to finish 15^th over the closing laps. The Kannapolis, North Carolina driver recently signed a development agreement with Spire Motorsports and will also contest a part-time CARS Tour schedule in the Late Model Stock class for Matt Piercy Racing. He became the CARS Tour’s youngest winner in the Pro Late Model division as a 12-year-old in 2023.

Brown, a 16-year-old from New London, North Carolina, who’ll take the reins of the No. 8 PayCafe/Ebb Logistics/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro this weekend, has shown his versatility over his almost five-year racing career, which started in Legend cars and has included Microsprints, off-road trucks, and most recently World of Outlaws and Lucas Oil Late Models. He was last year’s pavement Pro Late Model champion at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida, and earlier this month scored a pair of victories at New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedway in his first week ever competing in Super Late Models.

The 19-year-old Day will make his TA2 debut behind the wheel of the No. 17 Hendrickcars.com/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro after first making his mark at the highest levels of sprint car competition, then moving through the Late Model ranks to NASCAR and the ARCA Menards Series. He, too, is a Chevrolet development driver and in December signed a multiyear agreement with Hendrick Motorsports. As a 15-year-old in 2021, the native of Clovis, California, became the youngest winner in the USAC National Midget Series, and last year was a five-time winner in the High Limit Racing series. He also was tabbed to drive a Late Model for JR Motorsports last year and promptly scored a dominating victory in just his second start for the team at Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway. He competed in four NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races in 2024 with a best finish of 16^th in October at Homestead-Miami Speedway, and added three ARCA Menards Series races with a best finish of fourth in the September race at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City.

Skeen, the 38-year-old former TA2 champion from Durham, North Carolina, will be behind the wheel of the No. 48 Cube 3 Architecture/Guthrie’s Garage/Franklin Road Apparel/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro for his 36^th career TA2 race and second with TeamSLR. His first with the team came last June at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, where he qualified third and was running with the leaders before an electrical gremlin ended his bid late in the race. While this weekend marks just his second race with the team, he’s quite familiar with M1 Racecars equipment. He competed in the chassis during his tour of duty with Peterson Racing, with whom he made 12 starts driving a part-time TA2 schedule in 2022 and 2023. He scored back-to-back victories for Peterson in the 2022 races at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta and WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, California, among his five podium finishes in 2022 and 2023. Skeen is also no stranger to the top step of the TA2 podium at Sebring, having kicked off his 2020 series championship run with a Sebring victory. It was his first of six wins and eight podium finishes in nine races during that abbreviated season, all for Stevens-Miller Racing. Skeen is an 11-time TA2 winner, dating back to 2011.

This weekend’s Sebring SpeedTour kicks off with a pair of TA2 test sessions at 11:45 and 4:20 p.m. EST Thursday. Official practice is set for 11:20 a.m. Friday, followed by qualifying at 4:40 p.m. Race time is 12:15 p.m. Saturday with live video streaming coverage provided by new series broadcast Speed Sport 1, as well as the Trans Am channel on YouTube.

Another pair of M1 Racecars entries fielded by Peterson Racing return to the grid this weekend. Austin Green, the 2023 TA2 Series Rookie of the Year, returns to the cockpit of the No. 89 Peterson entry that he drove to a runner-up finish at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International last August, qualified on the pole at Mid-Ohio in June, and drove to a fifth-place finish at Sebring. Team owner and Masters-class competitor Doug Peterson is back behind the wheel of the No. 87 entry.

In addition to Green’s runner-up finish at Watkins Glen, M1 Racecars was represented on the TA2 podium last year at the traditional Memorial Day weekend race at Lime Rock, where Evan Slater qualified second and finished second for TeamSLR, and at the June race at the Pittsburgh International Race Complex, where TeamSLR driver Carson Kvapil finished third.

Riding along with TeamSLR drivers and their M1 Racecars once again this season is Nashville, Tennessee-based Franklin Road Apparel Company, which has been a longtime team supporter and serves as associate partner on all TeamSLR entries. Also continuing its support of the overall TeamSLR effort is Cube 3 Architecture.

Barry Boes, Driver, No. 27 Accio Data/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro:

You’re kicking off your second season with TeamSLR wearing the title of defending Pro-Am Challenge champion. Safe to say you feel that has a nice ring to it?

“Oh, it sure does. It’s also a little scary because I know there’s a big old target on my back (laughs). Seriously, it’s definitely the biggest accomplishment of my racing career and, yeah, I never thought I’d be sitting here having accomplished something like this, and now having the opportunity to show that it wasn’t a fluke. I’m definitely a better driver now than I was at this time last year. I’m a better driver now, I think, than I was three races before the end of last year. Everything we’re doing just keeps adding up. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot of growth still in front of me, but I’m definitely a better driver than I was coming into this race last year.”

What would you say made last year such a turning point in your career?

“It’s being surrounded by good people, and that’s a big deal, right? This is a group of people working together so that we can all win, and this type of thing has only ever happened to me under the Lagasse tent. We get the NASCAR kids who come in here who are 10 times as good as me, or the guys who are up and coming and have way more raw talent but just need the experience, and we all work together and we’re all learning how to help each other.”

Looking ahead to this coming season, what would need to happen in order for you to consider it a success?

“More finishes in the top-10 overall, and a couple of finishes in the top-five. There are so many good people that I think an overall podium finish would probably take a lot of things going my way, like it did for me at Detroit a couple of years ago, but getting in the top-five is something that I ought to be able to do.”

Tristan McKee, Driver, No. 28 Spire Gainbridge/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro:

You had your first taste of TA2 competition at last year’s final two regular-season races, plus a solid outing in the All-Star Race at Lime Rock last May. How do you feel about kicking off the new season at Sebring?

“I’m excited. I feel like Sebring is one of my favorite road courses, for sure. I’ve driven quite a lot of laps around there in TA2 cars, so I’m looking forward to it. We were fast there during the (January) test, and now we’re going back to kick off the 12-race season just trying to get as many wins and experience as possible, and chase after a championship.”

How much do you feel those races at VIR and COTA last fall prepared you for the 2025 season?

“I think the two races I did at the end of last year prepared me a lot, my first in the TA2 Series with all these really good road racers, and it was really cool. We had a good finish at VIR, and we were running good at COTA until we had a tire go down, but I think those prepared me really well, so I know what to expect going into all the races this year, especially Sebring. It’s a big track, so I’m really looking forward to it. TeamSLR has prepared me well, and so has Scott Speed back at the (Chevrolet) Tech Center. They prepare me for every race and they do a really good job.”

You mentioned Sebring is your favorite road course thus far. What do you like about it?

“Well, I’ve heard it hasn’t been repaved or touched up since 1990 or so, which makes it super rough – it was an old airport. The backstretch is rough. Turn 17, the last corner, is rough. But I really love it. It’s all concrete, so it has quite a decent amount of grip. It’s just a really fun track, the first track I ran a TA2 car at, too. There are some decent passing zones, a long front straightaway and a long back straightaway. And then great braking zones in turn seven and turn 10, as well. The track is just amazing, it’s so cool. We’ll have 39 cars out there this weekend. It’s going to be just like COTA with tons of cars, so we’ll have to qualify well.”

Carson Brown, Driver, No. 8 PayCafe/Ebb Logistics/SLR-M1Racecars Chevrolet Camaro:

You’ll be competing in TA2 for the first time in your relatively young career, which started in Legend cars and has taken you to primarily oval events on dirt and asphalt. What brings you to Trans Am and TeamSLR?

“Well, I kind of like bouncing around from car to car and surface to surface. I like doing asphalt, and then dirt, and now road courses. I’m still young and I’m trying to develop and just get better. I know a lot of young guys going road-course racing in Trans Am, and I know that’s kind of a big part of the Chevy program. I’ve never really raced road courses since my Legend car days, so we reached out and talked to Lorin Rainier at Chevrolet and he said that TeamSLR was the place to go. We talked to the team and ended up having a really, really good conversation. Now we’re here, we’ve tested twice, and I feel like we’ve got a lot of momentum going into Sebring looking for a good race, just some clean laps, run every lap and hopefully it ends up with a good finish, too.”

What have been your impressions of working with TeamSLR so far, and what do you think of the track at Sebring?

“Working with the Lagasses and the crew, I mean, they’re really good people and really cool. They rely heavily on reading data, and talking me around the track on the radio. One of the things that I want to get better at is learning how to read data. The team has just has a really strong atmosphere and gets stuff done. It’s been really good so far. Sebring has a lot of character, I figured that out really quickly. Sebring’s really the first true road course that I’ve ever driven on. I learned that it was an airfield from a long time ago, so it’s pretty rough. I don’t really have much to compare it to, so it’s definitely a unique track to start out at, but the place is really cool.”

What will have to happen for you to consider it a successful weekend at Sebring?

“A successful weekend will be just to get all the laps in, first of all, and just have a good, clean race, bring the car home in one piece, and just run and qualify well. One thing I’ve never truly done is qualify on a road course, so that’s going to be a lot different than how you qualify on asphalt or dirt. It’ll be interesting to learn. Overall, it’ll be about getting in the groove of things as far as how Trans Am goes about their ways and just trying and get a good finish in the process.”

Corey Day, Driver, No. 17 HendrickCars.com/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro:

You had a chance to take part in the January Trans Am test days at Sebring. What are your impressions of TeamSLR’s M1 Racecars, and navigating a road course, in general?

“I think the cars are awesome. They’re a blast. Sebring’s pretty tough, but the road-course stuff is fun. I get the sense I’m driving the car hard, like I do a dirt car, which makes it fun, whereas with the oval stuff, you lift a lot. The cars are cool. I was surprised the first time I drove it, how well it changes directions and that sort of thing. I mean, it’s a lot different because I’m not used to turning right, so that’s a change. I’m glad to be able to do it.”

How would you describe working with the Lagasses for the first time?

“It was good. Scott Sr., did a really good job helping me at Sebring. I mean, that’s just a really tough place and I’m used to four corners, not 17, so he did a good job at just helping me put it all together. Scotty’s run some dirt stuff, so he can really relate everything in my terms, better than me just trying to figure out the pavement terms. I’ve had a good time with both of them, for sure. I’m not up to speed as much as I want to be, yet, but I’m a racecar driver and I want to win, of course, in whatever I do. So it’s going to take a lot of work for me to get there because it’s just way different than what I’m used to. But I’ve got faith that I’m in the best place to get to where I want to be with the Lagasses.”

You’ll be one of 39 cars entered in Saturday’s TA2 race, your first. Your thoughts on that?

“It’s going to be big chaos (laughs). I don’t think there’s any race in the world that could start 39 cars and not have some sort of chaos if everyone’s trying to win, you know? If everyone’s out there riding around, it’d be a different story, but everyone’s trying to win, so I’m sure it’ll be chaos for me. It’ll be figuring out what’s going on for probably the first half of the race, but I’m excited. Qualifying is definitely going to be important.”

Mike Skeen, Driver, No. 48 Cube 3 Architecture/Guthrie’s Garage/Franklin Road Apparel/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro:

Your overall thoughts as you head to Sebring this weekend for your second outing with TeamSLR?

“I am really looking forward to getting back to racing this year in the Trans-Am TA2 category. It offers some of the best battles, and I know that TeamSLR will provide a top-level car to compete at the pointy end of the field. Many people have come together to make this race happen – Cube 3 Architecture, Guthrie’s Garage, and Franklin Road Apparel – and I just hope that we can build enough interest to stay on the grid all season.”

What do you feel will be the key to navigating the race on such a grueling track with a large field of 39 TA2 entries?

“Field size really doesn’t matter if most of it is behind you (laughs). But it’s great to start the season with such a strong field. It demonstrates the strength of the series, and there’s no more challenging circuit around to test everyone’s skill and equipment.”

-TeamSLR-