ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. (Sept. 16, 2025) – Fifteen-year-old Tristan McKee, the Cube 3 Architecture TA2 Series points leader through nine of 12 rounds this season, returns to the scene of his series debut last October when he and a trio of TeamSLR and M1 Racecars teammates hit the track for Saturday’s VIR SpeedTour at Virginia International Raceway in Alton.
The young driver from Kannapolis, North Carolina, who was born and raised in Williamsburg, Virginia, three hours up the road from the 3.27-mile, 17-turn VIR circuit, will be joined by first-year TA2 competitor Carson Brown, as well as pair of drivers who will be making their TA2 Series debuts – Lanie Buice and Naz Olkhovskyi.
McKee’s first official outing in TA2 competition came when the series last visited VIR on Oct. 5, 2024. He qualified sixth and finished fourth, just .7 of a second off the final spot on the podium, kicking off a methodical and determined march to his string of recent successes. The driver of the No. 28 Spire/Gainbridge/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro has won three of the last four rounds and finished second in the other, the wins coming July 22 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, July 12 at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International, and the most recent round Aug. 30 at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Bowmanville, Ontario. The runner-up finish came June 29 at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, and was part of a 1-2-3 TeamSLR finish led by the race-winning veteran Mike Skeen and third-place-finishing Corey Day, a fellow teen TA2 Series rookie who is part of the Hendrick Motorsports stable of drivers.
McKee arrives at VIR with a 182-point lead atop the TA2 standings over second-place Sam Corry and a 191-point lead over third-place Thomas Annunziata with three rounds remaining this season. The Chevrolet and Spire Motorsports development driver is riding a streak of seven consecutive podium finishes after coming home seventh and fifth in the season’s opening two events, respectively, at Sebring (Fla.) International Raceway in February and Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta in March. McKee returned to Watkins Glen to make his ARCA Menards Series debut Aug. 8, just five days after turning 15, and emerged with the victory after qualifying fourth. He finished second in the most recent ARCA event last Thursday at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.
Returning to TeamSLR looking to improve upon his first career TA2 Series podium in his fourth career start two rounds ago at Watkins Glen is Brown, the recently turned 17-year-old from New London, North Carolina. He qualified third and finished third at Watkins Glen in his third race behind the wheel of the No. 8 PayCafe/Ebb Logistics/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro. The versatile young driver opened the season with an eighth-place finish from the 12th starting position at Sebring, then followed it up with a fourth-place finish from the sixth starting position at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway in April. Brown this weekend moves to the No. 2 PayCafe/Ebb Logistics/SLR-M1 Racecars entry for Guthrie’s Garage.
In March, the primarily dirt and asphalt short-oval specialist finished sixth in his ARCA Menards Series East debut at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida. He also drove to a Super Late Model victory at Madison (Wis.) International Speedway this season.
Taking over the No. 8 SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro this weekend, thanks to the support of Chevrolet, Franklin Road Apparel and Cube 3 Architecture, is Buice, the 18-year-old from Jackson, Georgia, who this summer joined the Chevrolet Motorsports roster of development drivers. Buice has been a regular on the zMAX CARS Tour this season, competing in the Late Model Stock Car class for Lee Pulliam Performance, for whom she’s posted a pair of top-five finishes and five top-10s through the season’s first 13 events. Buice also made her ARCA Menards Series debut this season, driving part-time for Rev Racing. She drove to top-12 finishes in all five events she’s entered with best finishes of eighth at both Rockingham (N.C.) Speedway in February and Kansas Speedway in Kansas City in April. Buice began racing go-karts at the age of 10, then progressed through the Legend car ranks, winning a pair of Georgia state championships, as well as the 2022 Race of Champions in Las Vegas, followed by competition in various Late Model divisions.
Also making his TA2 Series debut this weekend is the 38-year-old Olkhovskyi, a Ukraine native who toured the European shifter kart circuit as a teen and has dabbled in various SCCA regional classes since moving to the United States in 2008. He’ll pilot a TA2 car he owns and built that will take to the VIR circuit as the No. 48 TeamSLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro. Olkhovskyi recently purchased an M1 Racecars chassis with an eye toward competing in the TA2 Series in 2026.
Joining the M1 Racecars contingent once again this weekend is Jared Odrick, the 37-year-old from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who played seven seasons with the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and Jacksonville Jaguars from 2010 through 2016. The second-year Pro-Am Challenge competitor has logged five top-two Pro-Am finishes in the last seven events, including victories May 3 at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, California, and at Mid-Ohio behind the wheel of his No. 00 Black Underwear/CoolBoxx/M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro. He’s currently holds a 55-point lead over second-place Keith Prociuk atop the Pro-Am standings with three events remaining.
TeamSLR will honor the memory of longtime supporter Tom Ellis on its racecars this weekend. Ellis, whose son Thomas drove for the team at selected events last season, passed away earlier this month. A celebration of life service is also scheduled for Thursday evening at VIR for the late TeamSLR driver Barry Boes, the defending Pro-Am Challenge champion who was involved in a fatal aviation accident Aug. 18.
VIR SpeedTour weekend kicks off Thursday with a pair of TA2 test sessions set for 12:55 and 4 p.m. EDT. Official TA2 practice is set for Friday at 12:35 p.m., followed by qualifying at 6 p.m. Saturday’s 31-lap, 75-minute race is set for 12:35 p.m. with series broadcast partner Speed Sport 1 providing live TV coverage, augmented by a live stream on the Trans Am channel on YouTube.
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, as well as Kallberg Racing, and Guthrie’s Garage.
You made your official TA2 Series debut last October at VIR with a near-podium finish. Talk about your evolution as a road racer in the time since. And could you have imagined then that you’d be coming back almost a year later having won three of your last four races and leading the championship?
“I feel like my road-racing skills have gotten so much better – how to race on a road course and just everything about it. I’ve learned a lot and feel like I’ve improved so much since then. And I feel like I’m just improving every race, going out there and getting better and better each time. The progress I’ve made between then and now is huge. I knew I had the potential to keep getting better and better and that it was just a matter of time before I got enough laps and experience to be able to do as well as we’re doing now.”
What are some of the factors that have contributed to the progress you’ve been able to make in the TA2 Series over the last year and a half?
“It’s been a lot of things. So much of it goes to Scott (Lagasse Sr.) and Scotty (Scott Lagasse Jr.), as well as Scott Speed and Josh Wise at GM and everyone at the Tech Center over there. Those are the people who’ve enable me to gain so much experience and learn all the techniques and every little thing that you need to know about road-course racing and how to be fast and how to drive the car, how it has to be driven in different types of corners. Oval racing, which is my background, is pretty standard, you’re basically turning left through two corners. Road racing is obviously completely different. So those four guys and the rest of the team have taught me so much.”
Describe what it takes to get around the VIR circuit.
“It’s a lot of fun. I think it’s probably one of the first road courses I ever ran on, I’ve gotten quite a lot of laps around there and it’s a really fun track. It’s a little bit narrow in some areas and, obviously, the esses are pretty wicked in a TA2 car as far as you’re just going pretty much flat out there and you’re going around 150 or 155 (mph), so you’re really getting it up there. There are a lot of high-risk parts of the track, so you have to kind of go about it in a methodical way. You’ve got to be aggressive in some areas and you also have to be a little bit careful in others, so it’s definitely a really, really fun track with some of the elevation, as well as going up the esses, then going down after that into Oak Tree. It’s just a really fun track and I enjoy going around it.”
You’re back in a TA2 car for the first time since your first career series podium at Watkins Glen in July. Do you feel like you can pick up where you left off in just your fourth-ever TA2 race?
“That was just a fun event, in general. It was my fourth TA2 race after we finished fourth at Sonoma, and Watkins Glen ended up being a little bit better, which is kind of what we were hoping for, and we ran a decent race. I fell back a little bit at the beginning but knew that we’d have that long-run speed that we needed and that we have with the M1 racecar and with SLR. I got passed by a few cars, but then we were able to make some ground back up on some restarts, and just later on in the race, the car really came alive and came to me there and we ended up on the podium, which was really fun. Hopefully, we can go even better at VIR. I definitely feel like we can win, we just need to have all the cards with us and everything has to fall in place. But it’s going to be cool racing at VIR. It’ll be my first time racing there. And I was born in California, but racing in the state that I was raised in Virginia will be really cool and is always fun. I was raised in Chesterfield, which is not too far outside of Richmond, so it’s always cool when I can race back up there in Virginia.”
You’re moving for the first time from the No. 8 Camaro to the No. 2 entered by Guthrie’s Garage, an M1 Racecars Camaro, with support from TeamSLR. Your thoughts on that?
“Well, I know that all the SLR M1 Racecars are good and, at the end of the race I feel like they all typically come alive. A car is a car to a certain extent, and I feel like the team does everything it can to keep all of them equal. We all drive each other’s cars at the test days so we know what’s what and how all the cars drive, but we always shoot for them to be pretty similar. Hopefully, it’s really good, kind of like the others that I’ve driven recently, and I’m hoping we can pull off a really good finish with it.”
How would you describe VIR compared to the other places you’ve driven so far in a TA2 car?
“It’s much more narrow than I’m used to. Watkins Glen was a little narrow in some parts of the Boot, but VIR is definitely going to be the most narrow racetrack of all of them, I’d say. But it’s a really cool racetrack with the esses and it should be a fun race and I’m looking forward to it. It’s especially fun going through the esses and up to the top of the hill and then down into Oak Tree. I feel like that’s a very narrow section and pretty high-speed, for the most part, right before you get to Oak Tree, so that’ll definitely be an interesting part of the racetrack where I’m going to have to learn how to drive it and be around cars. Aero will play a factor through those parts.”
Your thoughts on your TA2 Series debut with TeamSLR this weekend at VIR and working on your road-course race craft?
“I ran a WRL race with Low Country Motorsports about a month ago at Road Atlanta. That was kind of my first real taste of road-course racing, so I’ve had a little bit of experience, but nothing like working so intensely with a team like this. I had a chance to test with TeamSLR at VIR and it was really cool, very challenging. Road-course racing is very dependent on being super methodical with your feet and your hands and your shifting and all those things. I really enjoyed it. It was honestly one of my favorite things I’ve done in a while. I genuinely enjoyed every second of it, and I think that’s why I’m really excited to race the TA2 car at VIR, as well, just because of the challenge that comes along with it is so, so good, and it’s truly a blast.”
How would you describe the TA2 car compared to others that you’ve driven?
“It’s different, it drives different. I feel like it’s more reactive to the steering input, more reactive to the lefts and rights. There are a lot of big differences and it definitely took a few laps to get used to. It definitely gets up and going pretty good, it’s got a lot of power. You’ve got to be really methodical with your throttle input and just being consistent with that and not spinning the tires, especially coming from first gear. That’s something that surprised me, as well, how fast you can roll in first gear. Using all four of the gears throughout the whole course is definitely different. So I would say those are some of the big things, but I really enjoy it and I like the speed, I like the challenge of it and how it’s different than anything I’ve ever been in before.”
What has your experience been like working with TeamSLR so far?
“I really, really enjoyed working with Scott (Lagasse Jr.) and everybody at TeamSLR. They’re incredible people. I think a lot of times when I’m joining a new team or searching for a new place, another place to go, it’s always important to me to be around people that are really hard-working, no matter the circumstances, and just kind people, and I really feel that with TeamSLR. They all care for everyone’s best interest, which is really, really cool. I feel like they’ll be able to continue to help me develop and give me the things I need to be able to be a really good driver. All I have to do is listen and dive into the advice and the teaching that they’re giving me and just focus on that. I feel like it’ll pay off well and I’ll be able to be really good on the road courses one day, especially with a NASCAR career in mind. It’s super important to be good at any track you go to, so I don’t ever want to fall behind. I feel like their teaching and all their coaching is just going to make me a better driver, whether it be oval racing or road-course racing.”
You’re stepping up to racing in the TA2 Series for the first time in your career. What are your thoughts about the weekend?
“I have a lot of experience racing shifter karts in Europe, but not so much in these types of cars, so I think this is going to be a big step up for me. I’ve done a good amount of testing with TeamSLR in the last year and that’s why I’m so excited. VIR is an iconic racetrack, a really nice place to make a debut, I think. There are a lot of places where you have to be spot-on, and I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
What would you consider a successful weekend at VIR, and how will you approach the challenges of the track and facing TA2 Series competition?
“I think the expectation is just to finish the race, to see the checkered flag and learn as much as I can and slowly build up to where I can actually race with people. That will be a 100-percent gold achievement. It’s an iconic track and it is really challenging. I think the most appealing part is all the different levels of drivers in TA2 but in the same cars, which I feel gives you an opportunity to build and grow. That’s why I appreciate this opportunity. And the cars look great. I cannot even ask for more. This is going to be the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”
What has your experience been like working with TeamSLR as a driver?
“It’s the feeling I get when I’m with them – it’s like a one, big family. They’re always welcoming and helpful. It makes me want to help them, and they are open all the time to help me and give me advice and give me this opportunity. I would never be able to do any of this by myself.”
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