NASCAR team sign 14-year-old SENSATION to development ladder

Spire Motorsports have announced the signing of a teen sensation to a driver development agreement with the team.

14-year-old Tristan McKee started winning on the CARS Pro Late Model tour when he was just 12 years old, and has picked up multiple wins on the tour in the time since.

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The team announced the signing on Thursday, revealing that McKee is planned to race at least 45 events in 2025, in the zMAX CARS Late Model Stock Car and Pro Late Model tours, ARCA Menards Series and the Trans Am CUBE3 Architecture TA2 Series.

Team co-owner Jeff Dickerson revealed in a press release that two key figures at General Motors put him onto the signing, saying: "Josh Wise and Lorin Ranier called from General Motors, and based on my long history with both, it was one of those ‘if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me’ kind of things."

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Starting our driver development program with one of the youngest in the game.

Welcome to the team, @Racing7Tristan!

📰: https://t.co/wh4PcQYJvV pic.twitter.com/eoYFL5GhoN

— Spire Motorsports (@SpireMotorsport) January 16, 2025

Tristan McKee on the path to NASCAR

Dickerson continued: "Frankly, everyone around Tristan has nothing but good things to say about his speed, work ethic and versatility. He obviously comes from a great family so we can’t take too much credit. Tristan will be making noise in this sport in the short and long term and we’re excited to be on this journey with him.”

As for McKee himself, he said: “Nothing like this has happened to me before, so I’m really grateful for the opportunity that Jeff Dickerson and everyone at Spire Motorsports has given me. I think 2025 is going to be a really good year. We’re going to have plenty of races on the schedule, so I’m just looking forward to the opportunity and I can’t thank the people from Spire enough.”

On his continued development, he added: “I’m definitely looking forward to running the whole Trans Am schedule. I’ve never really raced road courses like that before, so I’m going to be learning every time I’m on the track. I’m working as hard as I can for all those races, you know, that’s a big deal.

"I’m really excited about a few of the CARS Tour races, especially (North) Wilkesboro. All those big late model stock races at the end of the year are important. They are pretty long races and you have to be really good at the end, so we’re going to focus our attention on those, as well. Martinsville at the end of the year is a big one.”

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