Double-Podium Day for TeamSLR at Sebring

Polesitter Mike Skeen Finishes Second Overall, Barry Boes Runner-Up in Pro-Am; Young Gun Tristan McKee Comes Home Seventh in Third Career TA2 Race; Carson Brown Eighth in TA2 Debut; Last-Lap Contact Foils Corey Day’s Debut

Overview

Date: Feb. 22, 2025

Event: Sebring SpeedTour (Round 1 of 12)

Series: Trans Am Series presented by Pirelli

Division: Cube 3 Architecture TA2 Series

Location: Sebring (Fla.) International Raceway

Layout: 3.74-mile, 17-turn road course

Format: 27 laps or 75 minutes

Weather: Partly cloudy, mid-70s

TA2 Winner: Thomas Annunziata of Nitro Motorsports

TeamSLR:

**Mike Skeen – Started 1^st, Finished 2^nd (Running, completed 23/23 laps)

**Tristan McKee – Started 5^th, Finished 7^th (Running, completed 23/23 laps)

**Carson Brown – Started 12^th, Finished 8^th (Running, completed 23/23 laps)

**Barry Boes – Started 16^th, Finished 14^th (Running, completed 23/23 laps)

**Corey Day – Started 23^rd, Finished 20^th (Running, completed 23/23 laps)

Noteworthy:

**The 38-year-old Skeen qualified on the pole Friday with a track-record lap of 2:04.196. It was his 14^th TA2 pole in his last 35 starts dating back to his series championship season in 2020.

**Skeen’s pole qualifying effort was TeamSLR’s second in a row as Carson Kvapil was fast qualifier in the 2024 season finale last November at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas. Connor Mosack earned the pole for TeamSLR at the 2023 season opener at Sebring.

**It was a double-podium day for M1 Racecars as Austin Green of Peterson Racing brought home a third-place finish.

**The 14-year-old McKee made just his third career TA2 start Saturday while 19-year-old Corey Day, his fellow Team Chevrolet development driver, and 16-year-old Carson Brown made their TA2 debuts.

**The 14^th-place overall finish for Boes netted a runner-up finish among the 14 drivers competing in the Pro-Am Challenge class this weekend. Boes is the defending Pro-Am Challenge champion, having scored class victories at seven of last year’s 12 events.

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

“A little disappointing. I mean, happy to be on the podium, finishing second for the TeamSLR guys, and so far this is a one-off. Hopefully we’ve shown enough to come back having found some sponsorship and try to race a lot more. We needed a little bit more green-flag running and we didn’t get that today. But really happy to be here, with big thanks to Guthrie’s Garage, Cube 3 Architecture and Franklin Road Apparel, everybody that helped put this deal together, and hopefully we can find some more to come back.”

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

“It was a good first weekend of the season. We were good, pretty much fast the whole time. It wasn’t good for us to have the amount of cautions that we had. I think we stayed around fourth and fifth the whole time, we would gain a little, lose a little. It was just kind of a steady fourth place. I think if we got some longer runs, it would’ve been probably a little bit better. Those last few laps, it was starting to come in a little bit. Thankful for all these guys who recently built this car. We’re still making it better, but we’re definitely making gains. And then I don’t know what happened on the last lap, whether he (Tyler Gonzales) lost brakes, the throttle stuck or whatever it was, he just drove into me. We’ll have to go back and look at the video and we’ll see what happened. I want to thank Chevrolet, Spire, Gainbridge, all these guys at TeamSLR, all these people that help us get to the track every week and help us make this car go round.”

Carson Brown, Driver, No. 8 PayCafe/Ebb Logistics/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro:

“I’d call it a success. I mean, we started off well, qualified about where we were expecting or wanting to qualify. We fell back a little bit on the initial start of the race, just got stuck on the outside and got trained on the bottom a little bit and tried to make our way up. There were a lot of cautions and a lot of wrecking, I kind of got stuck behind a guy and he just kept putting me in the dirt, and we finally got by him and then I was able to start marching our way forward and ended up eighth. So, we’re happy with it. The car’s back in one piece, which is one of the goals, and just need to improve on it a little bit more and I think we’ll be really good at the next one. I just want to say a big thank you to TeamSLR for preparing me a really good PayCafe/Ebb Logistics Chevrolet, and everyone else who makes all this possible.”

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

“I actually got spun on the last lap and dropped back to second in Pro-Am. But it was a lot of fun. We had way more caution time than I wanted, but every restart was very aggressive, very challenging. You had to challenge the cars in front of you while the guys behind you were challenging you, too. And then you had to sit in a super-hot car for several laps while they cleaned up the mess, and then take on the same challenge again. But still, it was one of the most fun races I’ve run.”

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

“I felt like – and I think I’ve said this and will say this after every single pavement race I have this year – I wish I could go restart the race after I finish it and I’d do a hundred things differently. But no, I feel like I definitely got some good experience today. Unfortunately, most of the race was under caution laps and not under green-flag laps, so that’s not great. But yeah, just good to get laps, I feel more comfortable with the car, comfortable around cars now, so that was all good to learn. And, honestly, I wish we were coming back here again, now that I know the track. I’m going to four different tracks this year and I only already know one of them a little bit, so it’s going to continue to be all new. But that’s why I’m doing this, to be put in these situations where I’ve got to learn quickly and under pressure. I thought it was a good day and, of course, I’d go back and do a couple of things differently if I could, but it’s all good.”

Next Up

Round two of the 2025 Cube 3 Architecture TA2 Series campaign is set for March 21-23 at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. The weekend kicks off with a pair of TA2 test sessions at 11:25 a.m. and 4:55 p.m. EDT. Official TA2 practice takes place at 10:35 a.m. Saturday, followed by qualifying at 4:45 p.m. Sunday’s 40-lap, 75-minute race goes green at 1:10 p.m. with live streaming video provided by new series partner Speed Sport 1, simulcast with coverage on the Trans Am channel on YouTube.

-TeamSLR-