SEBRING, Fla. — Lanie Buice is one of three drivers who will drive the full Trans Am Series season for TeamSLR beginning with this weekend’s season opener at Sebring Int’l Raceway.
Buice, the 18-year-old from Jackson, Ga., made her TA2 Series debut during a pair of outings for TeamSLR in last September’s race at Virginia International Raceway in Alton, and November’s season finale at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, showing solid speed at both events.
She’ll take over the reins of the No. 27 Sunoco/Guthrie’s Garage/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro for the 12-race season.
“I’m just super excited and grateful for the opportunity to represent Chevrolet and be a part of TeamSLR, with all they’ve accomplished over the past few years, and to be surrounded by such a great group of people under Scott Lagasse and his dad, and to continue to learn from the whole group,” Buice said. “I’m also excited about the teammates that I’m going to have and the opportunity to learn from them and just become better and better at perfecting my race craft. The TA2 Series is a great place to be in helping me get better all around because I’m still so new to the road-course world. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s going to be really good for me, to help continue to build for what I want in the future.
“I’m always thinking about being the best that I can be in every situation that I’m in and continuing to develop, be in contention for wins and just set myself up well for the future.”
Buice has been a regular on the CARS Tour, finishing 11th in last year’s final Late Model Stock Car standings behind a pair of top-fives and six top-10s for Lee Pulliam Performance. Buice also made her ARCA Menards Series debut last season, driving part-time for Rev Racing.
She finished in the top-12 in all five events she entered with best results of eighth at both Rockingham (N.C.) Speedway in February and Kansas Speedway in Kansas City in April.
Buice had two full days of testing at Sebring in January.
“The test at Sebring was super beneficial, getting us back in the swing of things for the new year,” Buice said. “I got to learn from Helio and really focus on being prepared for coming back for race weekend. And since then, I was able to use all the data that I collected over the two days back at the shop with the Wise (Optimization) people and really work with Scott Speed and Josh Wise and Dan Jansen to better prepare myself for the race weekend.
“So I’m feeling super prepared – it’s going to be interesting – and I’m hoping that all of the effort that I’ve put into preparing for Sebring will really just set up a really good baseline for the rest of the year and all the other tracks that we’ll go to. I probably won’t get quite as much time at the other places versus how much we’ve gotten at Sebring.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how all that plays out because I think Sebring is a very technical place, but I tend to thrive a little bit more at more higher-grip racetracks, and as we know, Sebring is super flat.”
Watch Trans Am races on SPEED SPORT 1.
