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15-Year-Old Becomes Youngest Trans Am Champion Ever after Dominating Victory at Barber Motorsports Park; Early Incident Ends Corey Day's Bid; Naz Olkhovskyi Finishes Seventh in Pro-Am
Overview
Date: Oct. 19, 2025
Event: Barber SpeedTour (Round 11 of 12)
Series: Trans Am Series presented by Pirelli
Division: Cube 3 Architecture TA2 Series
Location: Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama
Layout: 2.38-mile, 17-turn road course
Format: 42 laps or 75 minutes
Weather: Sunny, mid-70s
TA2 Winner: Tristan McKee of TeamSLR
TeamSLR:
- Tristan McKee – Started 1st, Finished 1st (Running, completed 42/42 laps)
- Naz Olkhovskyi – Started 19th, Finished 17th (Running, completed 39/42 laps)
- Corey Day – Started 6th, Finished 24th (Retired, completed 3/42 laps)
M1 Racecars:
- Jared Odrick – Started 11th, Finished 11th (Running, completed 41/42 laps)
Noteworthy:
- At 15 years, two months and 16 days of age, McKee became the youngest champion in the history of the Trans Am Series presented by Pirelli. The record was previously held by Brent Crews, who won the 2023 TA2 Series championship at 15 years, seven months and six days of age.
- Sunday’s victory was the rookie McKee’s fourth in the last six events and gave him an insurmountable 169-point lead over second-place Sam Corry in the overall driver championship with the Nov. 2 season finale at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas still left on the schedule. McKee also clinched the season-long Rookie of the Year title, as well as the Young Guns title for drivers 25 and under, with the 17-year-old Corry second in those standings, as well.
- McKee started on the pole for the third time in the last four races and led all 42 laps. He also laid down the fastest lap to earn the Omalagato Fastest Lap of the Race Award for the second event in a row and the third time this season. His margin of victory over runner-up Noah Harmon was 11.92 seconds, while Corry finished third, 23.4 seconds behind McKee..
- Sunday’s victory was TeamSLR’s sixth in a row, dating back to McKee’s June 22 win at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington. Veteran Mike Skeen followed with a victory June 29 at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, where McKee was the runner-up and Corey Day was third to give TeamSLR a podium sweep. McKee won the next two events – July 12 at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International and Aug. 30 at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Bowmanville, Ontario. Prior to Sunday, 17-year-old Carson Brown was victorious for TeamSLR Sept. 20 at Virginia International Raceway (VIR) in Alton.
- Day, the 19-year-old Hendrick Motorsports No. 17 driver, saw his fourth career TA2 Series start come to an end just three laps into the race after he was forced off the track and took a high-speed ride through the gravel trap outside turn one on the opening lap. Debris clogged his racecar’s air intake and caused it to overheat over the next two laps before it was retired.
- Olkhovskyi, a 38-year-old from Ukraine making his second TA2 Series start this weekend, finished 17th overall and seventh among the Pro-Am Challenge-class competitors. He was 18th overall and ninth in Pro-Am in his inaugural race at VIR.
- Odrick, who entered the weekend with a six-point lead over Keith Prociuk atop the Pro-Am standings, finished second in class Sunday while Prociuk finished third.
Tristan McKee, Driver, No. 28 Spire Gainbridge/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro:
“This feels really good, knowing all the hard work that everyone put in over the past year and a half, two years, with all the TeamSLR crew and everyone back at Chevy – Josh Wise, Scott Speed and Lorin Ranier. There’s just been so much hard work that’s gone into this. and just polishing all my road-race skills, so it feels really, really good to get this done. All my TeamSLR guys brought a really fast Chevy. Thank you to Gainebridge, Spire, HendrickCars.com, Jeff Dickerson and Bill Anthony at Spire, and we couldn’t do this without Nik Middleton at Cube 3 and Ken Thwaits at Franklin Road and their great support. All the people at TeamSLR worked really hard this weekend getting this thing tuned in for me and it obviously turned out really good. We won (the race and the championship) by a large margin, so it feels really good. Lastly, I can’t thank Scott Lagasse Jr., enough for all the effort he puts into coaching me and for putting together such a great program.”
Naz Olkhovskyi, Driver, No. 48 #StandForUkraine/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro:
“I think the weekend went great. I learned a lot and got some more experience that I was lacking. Unfortunately, the engine felt like it dropped a cylinder, but I finished the race and got a lot of practice laps that I really needed. I’m looking forward to my next race early next year.”
Corey Day, Driver, No. 17 HendrickCars.com/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro:
“In the very first turn of the race, I don’t know if the 7 (Noah Harmon) hit dirt or what, but he pushed me, or slid all the way up to my door and I had to go off the track. I had no more room left. The (overnight) rain made the sand traps into mud, so as soon as I hit that, it packed the whole air dam and the radiator full of mud and it just overheated. There was nothing the guys could do to get the mud out of there in a decent amount of time. It’s unfortunate. I think I ran a lap and a half after that at speed, hoping it would cool down and clean itself out. I thought we had a fast TeamSLR HendrickCars.com Chevy car, so it’s really unfortunate.”
Next Up
The 2025 Cube 3 Architecture TA2 Series season concludes two weeks hence with the 12th and final round, the Mission Foods COTA SpeedTour, Oct. 31 to Nov. 2 at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. The weekend begins Friday (Oct. 31) with a pair of TA2 test sessions at 11:30 a.m. and 5:05 p.m. CDT. Official TA2 practice is set for 11:30 a.m. Saturday (Nov. 1), followed by qualifying at 5:10 p.m. The 30-lap, 75-minute race around the 3.4-mile, 20-turn circuit begins at 9:15 a.m. CST Sunday (Nov. 2) with live video provided by series partner Speed Sport 1, augmented by simulcast coverage on the Trans Am channel on YouTube.
-TeamSLR-