Jake Drew Looks To Lock Down Rookie, Young Guns Championships Joined by Boris Said Jr., TA2 Series Newcomer Vincent Apple
HIGH POINT, N.C. (Oct. 31, 2024) – A pair of season-long championships are on the line in the Silver Hare Racing camp as it heads to the 2024 Cube 3 Architecture TA2 Series finale Sunday at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas.
First-year TA2 competitor Jake Drew, the 24-year-old from Fullerton, California, heads to the 3.4-mile, 20-turn circuit that just two weekends ago hosted Round 19 of the 2024 Formula One World Championship hoping to emerge with both Rookie of the Year honors and first place in the Young Guns standings for drivers under 25. Drew will be joined in the three-car Silver Hare camp by season-long teammate Boris Said Jr., as well as series newcomer Vincent Apple, for Sunday’s 30-lap, 75-minute race.
Drew will contest the 12th and final round of the 2024 TA2 Series season behind the wheel of the No. 57 Silver Hare Racing/Franklin Road Apparel Chevrolet Camaro. He didn’t make his TA2 debut until the season’s second round in March at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, where he finished just one position short of the podium, but has been a model of consistency ever since with three podium finishes and seven top-fives in 10 races. He arrives for COTA SpeedTour weekend atop the Rookie of the Year standings by a hefty, 76-point margin over second-place Josh Hurley, and is within striking distance in the Young Guns race, trailing leader Thomas Annunziata by 21 points. Drew sits fourth in the overall TA2 standings despite missing the season opener at Sebring (Fla.) International Raceway by the same 21-point margin behind third-place Annunziata, who’s contested all 11 rounds thus far. Drew’s most recent podium finish of third came in the Oct. 6 round at Virginia International Raceway, High Point, North Carolina-based Silver Hare Racing’s home track. Drew came to Silver Hare after running a half-dozen NASCAR Truck Series events in 2023 and a 23-race slate of ARCA Menards Series outings from 2021 to 2023 that featured three road-course victories in 2022.
Said, the 20-year-old first-year driver of the No. 75 HendrickCars.com/Silver Hare Racing Chevrolet Camaro, returns to the scene of his 2023 season-best finish of seventh a year ago this weekend. He, too, has been a model of consistency in his second fulltime TA2 season, having scored back-to-back career-best finishes of sixth May 25 at Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Connecticut, and June 22 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington during a string of five top-eight finishes. The son of NASCAR and sportscar racing veteran Boris Said arrives at COTA eighth in the TA2 standings and fourth among the Young Guns despite also missing a round this season, the June 9 race at Pittsburgh International Race Complex.
Making his TA2 Series debut this weekend in the No. 5 Silver Hare Racing/Hope for the City Chevrolet Camaro will be the 43-year-old Apple, an open-wheel racing veteran who hails from Las Vegas who made his mark driving Formula Fords in the U.S. and on the European Formula Renault circuit as a teenager in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He began racing go-karts against the likes of Patrick Long and Danica Patrick at the age of 12, and competed against name drivers, including Kimi Räikkönen, during his three-year Formula Renault run in Europe. As his schedule running the family mining company has allowed in recent years, Apple has dabbled in sportscar endurance races in the West. Last November, he co-drove to a class victory in the NASA 25 Hours of Thunderhill Raceway Park in Willows, California. He was behind the wheel for eight of the race’s 25 hours for his five-driver team, which was victorious by a 12-lap margin.
This weekend’s COTA SpeedTour kicks off with a pair of TA2 test sessions at 10:55 and 4:55 p.m. EDT Friday. Official practice is set for 11:30 a.m. Saturday, followed by qualifying at 4:45 p.m. Race time is 10:35 a.m. EST Sunday with live television provided by series partner MAVTV, augmented by live-streaming video on the Trans Am and SpeedTour channels on YouTube. MAVTV will air a 60-minute race show at 8 p.m. EST on Thursday, Nov. 7.
Silver Hare Racing leverages its Trans Am effort to promote its arrive-and-drive program, where aspiring racers and even tenured professionals hone their road-racing skills on some of the most revered tracks in North America. NASCAR Cup Series drivers Daniel Suárez, Christopher Bell, William Byron and Harrison Burton have all wheeled Silver Hare Racing-prepared cars to burnish their road-racing abilities in top-flight equipment.
The team offers six, professionally built and maintained TA2 chassis from Howe Racing for both competition and private testing. Silver Hare Racing has a dedicated, fulltime crew and operates out of a state-of-the-art facility in High Point, North Carolina. At the track, two 53-foot Featherlite transporters serve as the team’s base, each outfitted with a lounge and smart TVs for data and video review, as well as for hospitality.
“With NASCAR having so many more road-course races, it’s our goal for Silver Hare Racing to be the preferred team for drivers to get that road-course experience,” said Laura Hull, Silver Hare Racing co-owner and team manager. “We want to be that important step in the ladder for the young, up-and-coming drivers. We want people to know we have an arrive-and-drive program, where for people who want to run this track or another, we provide the opportunity to do that and be successful.”
Jake Drew, driver, No. 57 Silver Hare Racing/Franklin Road Apparel Chevrolet Camaro:
You’re down to the last race of your first career season in TA2. How are you planning to approach the weekend at COTA?
“We’ll try and win this thing. I mean, it’s the last race of the year, and of course everybody wants to win, but that’s one of the last things on our list of things to achieve. We have a couple of poles, some podiums, we’ve brought the car back clean every race, looking good for Rookie of the Year. You can’t ask for much more other than let’s go and end the year with a win, give everybody something to stay pumped over the offseason. I haven’t really gotten much advice about how to get around the track at COTA, but I’ve definitely watched a lot of race broadcasts from the last couple of years and it definitely looks like it gets pretty racy and pretty wild at times. So I’ll just have to keep my head on a swivel and try to be ahead of the game on that. I think just keeping everything clean for the whole 100 miles is the biggest part of it. It looks like tempers get going pretty high and there are definitely a lot of danger zones with curves and stuff that can tear up the car. So we’ll try to take care of the car throughout the weekend and throughout the race, and I think we can be in the hunt for a win at the end if we can do that.”
In recent years, while your career centered around stock cars, most notably the ARCA Menards Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, did you ever think you’d be racing in a road racing series like Trans Am?
“Not really, to be honest with you. I mean, as I started my racing career, I guess I kind of always wondered what it would be like if I got the opportunity to run primarily road courses because it was my whole background, so it’s been really cool to run this whole year with Silver Hare, with the support of Cube 3 and Franklin Road to help finish this year. It’s been humbling, really. It’s been a really tough year, but in a good way, and I appreciate that. I’ve had to push myself really hard to do well and pushing to keep getting better, and we’ve had pretty consistent results. It seems like we’re just looking for that last couple of percent and looking to try and extract that this weekend with our first win together.”
Do you feel a particular cool factor being able to race on a track that just two weeks ago hosted the Formula One World Championship?
“I mean, I think the track’s cool, for sure. I’ve been watching races on it for years and it’s pretty much like a lot of the places we’ve been to this year, and places I got to go to last year and stuff. As I keep progressing in my professional career, it’s cool to visit a lot of these well-known and famous racetracks and look forward to checking one of the bigger ones off the list this weekend. Hopefully we can go out and make it a really memorable one.”
Boris Said Jr., driver, No. 75 HendrickCars.com/Silver Hare Racing Chevrolet Camaro:
Your overall thoughts about heading to COTA this weekend in your HendrickCars.com/Silver Hare Camaro, particularly in light of your 2023 season-best finish of seventh there a year ago this weekend?
“The first thing I’m looking forward to is it’s a good field this week with 45 cars out there. There will be a lot of fast cars and it’s going to be really competitive, which is always a good thing. It’s a cool track for TA2 cars and it’s fun, and I like it a lot, so I’m excited. Last year was pretty good. It was very chaotic, but it was a fun and it ended up well. There were quite a few yellows but luckily we ended up missing them all. I’m looking forward to going there this time in my HendrickCars.com Camaro.”
How would you describe what it’s like to race at COTA?
“I think it’s a tighter track than people might think. It has the most slow corners of any track we go to, a lot of hard braking into slow corners, so that’s an element of fun in its own way. I like turn 19 the best, the second-to-last corner, a left-hand sweeper that leads you to the last turn that puts you onto the front straight. I think our Silver Hare cars should be really good there like they have been the last few years.”
Looking back on your first season with Silver Hare Racing, what stands about working with the team?
“It’s been a good year. I’m happy to have done some good racing with Silver Hare this season and I’m looking forward to whatever the future holds. The team has such a tight-knit, family feel to it and everyone really cares a lot about each other and about doing everything the right way. It’s a good place to be, and it’s been a really good experience. Right now, we’re just focused on getting a good, strong finish this weekend, for sure.”
Vincent Apple, driver, No. 5 Silver Hare Racing/Hope for the City Chevrolet Camaro:
With your extensive open-wheel racing background, how did you end up in the Trans Am Series and with Silver Hare Racing?
“I’ve been interested in the Trans Am Series for probably a year and a half now. I’ll be one of the older guys out there, so when I was growing up racing, we didn’t have all the electronics and paddle shifts and ABS and traction control that they have in so many forms of racing today. So I was looking at the Trans Am Series because they call it a driver’s car, there’s not all the computers and aids, it’s up to the driver, which really interested in me. My search for a team led me to Silver Hare and everything kind of came to fruition, which has been really nice. I flew to the shop to do a seat fitting just because I know how important it is to fit in the car properly, so that’s all I’ve had a chance to do. It’ll be out of the pan and into the fire when we get to COTA.”
This will be not only your first time in a TA2 car, but your first outing at COTA. What have you been doing to prepare, and how are you going to approach the weekend?
“COTA’s a track that always kind of stood out to me, one that I know I would love to drive. So here we are, it’s COTA, it’s a TA2 car, I can’t wait to see what I’m capable of. I’ve been telling a lot of people this weekend is going to show me if I’m delusional or not, do I really have what I think, and how this will test me? And that’s what I really want is to see what I’m capable of, see if I’m really as fast as I think I am. I’ve raced against some big names and done fairly well against them, so hopefully some of that will come back and I’ll be good. I’ve been watching a lot of in-car on YouTube to get an idea of shift points, breaking points, and stuff like that so at least I have some kind of an idea. And a lot of it for the weekend for me is just keeping the car in the right direction and just building up slowly, just get used to the car, go out and make sure to get the laps in. I’ll need to be in the upper half of the field in qualifying so that way I can race on Sunday, and of course the biggest thing that I could see is getting through turn one because that seems like a crazy turn with everybody going five- and six-wide and crazy stuff like that.”
About Hendrick Automotive Group:
Representing 131 franchises and 25 manufacturer nameplates from the Carolinas to California, Hendrick Automotive Group is the largest privately held automotive retail organization in the United States. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, the company employs more than 10,000 people in its 94 dealership locations, 21 collision centers and four accessories distributor installers in 13 states. For more information, please visit HendrickCars.com.
About HendrickCars.com:
HendrickCars.com is the online home for everything Hendrick Automotive Group. Visitors can shop thousands of new or pre-owned vehicles, locate centers for service and collision repair, receive a value to sell or trade their car, chat online with customer service, discover career opportunities, learn more about vehicle protection programs, and explore how the company gives back to the community.
About Silver Hare Racing:
Silver Hare Racing is a fulltime competitor in the TA2 division of the Trans Am Series presented by Pirelli. The multicar team has won the TA2 masters class championship three times (2018, 2019 and 2020) with driver and team co-owner Maurice Hull. Under the leadership of Hull’s wife, co-owner and team manager Laura Hull, Silver Hare Racing provides a variety of services that includes private testing and arrive-and-drive programs. The team offers six, professionally built and maintained TA2 chassis from Howe Racing and operates from a state-of-the-art facility in High Point, North Carolina. For more information, please call 336-870-5151 or visit SilverHareRacing.com.
