ALTON, Va. — 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 at Virginia International Raceway.
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, has won three of the past four TA2 races aboard the No. 28 Spire/Gainbridge/SLR-M1 Racecars Chevrolet Camaro.
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.
McKee credits the SLR team for his success.
“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,” McKee said. “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.”
WATCH CUBE 3 ARCHITECTURE TA2 RACING LIVE FROM VIR SATURDAY, SEPT. 20th AT 12:00PM ET ON SPEED SPORT 1. CLICK FOR DETAILS.
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.
“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.”
McKee believes he knows the fast way 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,” he explained. “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.”
Watch this weekend’s Trans Am Series races live on SPEED SPORT 1.
