An IMSA race has turned into a family affair with 8 different teams paired with relatives

By Canadian Press on January 22, 2025.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Ben Sloss figured pretty quickly he’d found a serious love interest when he met a woman who loved cars and racing as much as he did, but also agreed to an 11 p.m. first date to chase a snowstorm into Yosemite National Park for an overnight photography expedition.

The tech executive had met his adrenaline-junkie, risk-taking match, and Sloss has been married 15 years now to his wife, Christine. On Friday, they embark in one of their biggest adventures yet when they compete as teammates in the Michelin Pilot Challenge at Daytona International Speedway.

It’s the highest level of competition the two have ever entered, and they are hardly an anomaly in the support race for this weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona, In all, the race has seven different sets of families competing in the same car. An eighth family is in separate cars.

“Normally in a relationship there’s some checks and balances. Like, one of you has this irrational hobby or interest and the other is like ‘Well, OK, but let’s not overdue it,” Ben Sloss said. “But we both have the same interests. We look at something and both say, ‘Woo, this is shiny!’ This was one of the things we actually bonded over.”

The four-hour race is truly a family affair from the Sloss couple, who will race the No. 15 van der Steur Racing Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT4 Evo as a Bronze Cup entry in the touring class, across the board.

Other families in the race:

1. Father-and-son Roland and Austin Krainz share the No. 27 Auto Technic Racing BMW M4 GT4 EVO with a third driver, Stevan McAleer. Austin Krainz and McAleer will race the full schedule while father Roland is the endurance driver for the four-hour races.

2. Father-and-son Eddie and Eduardo Gou will share the No. 55 Gou Racing CUPRA Leon VZ.

3. Father-and-son Alex and Eric Rockwell share the No. 10 Rockwell Autosport Development Audi RS3 LMS TCR along with Christina Lam. The Rockwells have run occasional races for several years.

4. Father-and-son Dean and Sam Baker share the No. 52 Baker Racing Audi RS3 LMS TCR with James Vance at Daytona; the Bakers ran occasional 2024 races.

5. Father-and-daughter Ron and Megan Tomlinson share the No. 37 Precision Racing LA Audi RS3 LMS TCR. They are new to the championship in 2025.

6. Father-and-daughter Larry and Riley Pegram share the No. 72 Pegram Racing Hyundai Veloster N TCR. They ran the final three races of the 2024 season.

7. Brothers Matt and Hugh Plumb are splitting the two No. 46 Team TGM Aston Martin AMR GT4 Evo cars — so racing for the same team, just not in the same cars. For father-and-daughter

For the Pegrams, this is a combination Larry never saw coming during his decorated motorcycle racing career. Neither of his daughters showed any interest in racing, and Riley played on her high school’s boy’s varsity soccer team.

But when she turned 16, she suddenly grew tired of soccer and asked her dad if she could try racing. He started her slowly in karts. They gradually climbed the racing ladder and will be making their IMSA debut Friday.

Riley is now 20 and wants to be a professional race car driver with a goal of making it to IMSA’s top Weathertech Series. Larry will allow her to go as far as she wants so long as she’s passionate about it, and through her rapid progress, believes she will be ready for one of the Weathertech classes sometime next year.

Will the Ohio-based father-and-daughter do it together?

“I want her to do whatever she wants. Right now, I am a kid in a candy store,” Larry Pegram said. “I get to race with my 20 year old daughter every weekend and she wants to hang out with me. Unfortunately, she’s just like her father in that if she’s not at a racetrack, she doesn’t feel at home.”

Their Michelin Pilot schedule is 10 races this season, but the Pegrams continue to compete in lower-level racing series all year.

Similar for the Sloss couple, despite his intense job as a top executive at Google. It was Christine who met the driver coach Mike Peters and felt Peters could help the couple advance in their hobby. Peters is also a driver and has raced both with Ben Sloss, and will fill in for him as Christine’s co-driver some this year when work prevents Sloss from slipping away to the track.

It happened last weekend at Daytona, where they have rented a house, but Ben Sloss has had to juggle both track time and his job. He credits Christine for keeping all the extracurriculars running and she has creative control over the helmet and firesuit designs, and is one of the few drivers who wears a two-piece driving suit because she wanted a fashionable look.

They got to this level in part because of Christine, who sat watching a Michelin Pilot Challenge last year and figured she and her husband could be in the same series. She learned as much as she could about the series, went to an Aston Martin dealership to sit in one of the cars and see if it was a comfortable fit, and got the ball rolling on finding them a team they could partner with for a full season.

“We were sitting there watching the race, and looking at it, we’re like, ‘This looks like us driving, right? We’re both fair drivers,’” she said. “So I thought let’s give it a go. And here we are.”

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Jenna Fryer, The Associated Press