Mid-Ohio Next Up for TeamSLR

Barry Boes Carries the Flag for M1 Racecars Team After Regaining Pro-Am Challenge Lead at Pittsburgh

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (June 19, 2024) – The second half of the Cube 3 Architecture TA2 Series kicks off this weekend at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, where Barry Boes will lead the way for TeamSLR fresh off his third Pro-Am Challenge-class victory of the season and feeling hungry for more.

It will be the fifth career TA2 Series start at the 2.58-mile, 13-turn circuit located smack between Cleveland and Columbus for Boes, driver of the No. 28 Accio Data/SLR-M1 Racecars Ford Mustang. The M1 Racecars driver regained the lead in the Pro-Am standings with his ninth-place overall finish two weekends ago in the series’ first-ever visit to the Pittsburgh International Race Complex in Western Pennsylvania. He was joined in the TeamSLR camp at Pittsburgh by 21-year-old Chevrolet development driver Carson Kvapil, who made his first start for the team since a pair of outings last summer and promptly wheeled the No. 28 Team Chevrolet/SLR-M1 Racecars Camaro to a third-place finish. It was TeamSLR’s second podium result in as many races after Evan Slater scored a runner-up finish two weekends prior at Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Connecticut.

Boes, the sixth-year TA2 Series veteran, opened his inaugural season with TeamSLR with back-to-back Pro-Am Challenge-class victories at Sebring (Fla.) International Raceway and Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. A three-race string of misfortunes followed, but he drove a solid race at Pittsburgh and was able to regain the lead in the Pro-Am standings by a 90-point margin with his victory. Best of Boes’ four previous TA2 starts at Mid-Ohio was last year’s 13^th-place finish from the 30^th starting position driving for the BC Race Cars team in June.

Another pair of other M1 Racecars entries fielded by Peterson Racing return to the TA2 Series this weekend for the first time since the season opener at Sebring. Last year’s TA2 Series Rookie of the Year Austin Green returns to the cockpit of the No. 89 Ford Mustang that he drove to a fifth-place finish at Sebring, while team owner and Masters-class competitor Doug Peterson is back behind the wheel of the No. 87 Ford Mustang.

Slater was the fourth young driver to make his TA2 debut in TeamSLR M1 Racecars equipment this season in the interests of developing his road-racing craft, including a pair of 16-year-olds – Gavan Boschele and Julian DaCosta. Boschele drove the No. 28 SLR-M1 Racecars entry to finishes of 15^th at Sebring, eighth at Road Atlanta and seventh at NOLA Motorsports Park in Avondale, Louisiana, while DaCosta’s TA2 debut resulted in a 10^th-place finish from the ninth starting position at NOLA. In last month’s race at World Wide Technology Raceway outside St. Louis, 18-year-old Jake Finch, a two-time ARCA winner, drove the No. 17 Phoenix Construction/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro in his TA2 debut and was vying for a solid top-10 finish before a tire barrier bounced into the path of his racecar during a late-race incident that he otherwise would have avoided.

Riding along with this weekend’s TeamSLR drivers and their M1 Racecars, as it will all season long, is Nashville, Tennessee-based Franklin Road Apparel Company, which has been a longtime team supporter.

M1 Racecars was represented on the podium at 12 of the 13 TA2 rounds in 2023, highlighted by a pair of victories by Rafa Matos for Peterson Racing. Team SLR’s Dillon Machavern and Thad Moffitt both scored podium finishes, as did TeamSLR driver Connor Mosack at the season-opening event at Sebring, when he qualified on the pole and led the first 19 laps of the race before finishing third.

This weekend’s Mid-Ohio SpeedTour kicks off with TA2 test sessions at 1:40 and 5:50 p.m. EDT Thursday, followed by Friday’s official TA2 practice at 12:05 p.m. and qualifying at 4:50 p.m. Race time Saturday is 12:40 p.m. and the 45-lap, 75-minute event will be televised live by series partner MAVTV, augmented by live-streaming video on the Trans Am and SpeedTour channels on YouTube. MAVTV will air a 60-minute race show at 8 p.m. EDT on Thursday, June 27.

Barry Boes, Driver, No. 27 Accio Data/SLR-M1 Racecars Ford Mustang:

You ended your recent string of bad luck at Pittsburgh two weekends ago by winning the Pro-Am Challenge class and coming away with a ninth-place overall finish. Do you feel that momentum carrying its way to Mid-Ohio this weekend?

“I am, definitely. Mid-Ohio is actually a really good track for me, but I’ve had some bad luck there to go with some good luck. My second time there in Trans Am, I qualified inside the top-10 and had a good run going before I got taken out 13 laps into the race. That would’ve been my first top-10 finish. I got taken out another time, and another time I had a ball link break three-quarters of the way through the first lap of the race. So I’ve shown well there but I’ve been taken out a few times and I’ve had stuff break a time or two. I just need to have another good race where nothing breaks and I don’t make any mistakes and we should end up really good.”

This will be your fifth TA2 start at Mid-Ohio. What are your thoughts about the track and how it races?

“One of the reasons early on that I did well at Mid-Ohio is that it’s a very flowy, momentum track and it’s the kind of track where you’ve got to really maintain your rhythm. It’s more like the tracks that I learned to race on, and I’m usually good at getting out of corners, and there are a couple of places where you’ve got to get out of the corners really well. High-speed corners have been the areas where I’ve had the most challenges. I’ll just need to clean up a few things and we’ll be ready to go this weekend.”

Everyone’s talking about the extreme heat that will be prevalent throughout the eastern half of the country this weekend. How do you typically fare in hot-weather races?

“I have to admit that heat is my Achilles heel, that’s why I have to have a ton of extra cooling and stuff in the car. I’ve got a coolshirt and coolpants, I’ve got two of the chiller units, I’ve got several different fans that blow hot air out of different areas of the cockpit, and I’ve got a bunch of insulation on the inside and outside of the car around the exhaust and the floorboard. It’s not ideal for the car, but if I get hot, my performance just immediately falls off, so I just can’t get hot.”

How do you expect the heat will affect the racing this weekend overall?

“We’ve done a lot of work on the car both technically and in terms of countering the heat, so if all goes according to plan, I expect us to do really well. It being really hot, there are a lot of other drivers out there who think real men don’t need cooling devices and what not. Historically, Mid-Ohio is one of the places where I’ve been able to move up later in the race because I do have really good cooling and I can watch other drivers get hot and start making mistakes. We’ll see how that plays out this weekend.”

-TeamSLR-