Debuting DART Car Project is a Female-Led, Mission-Driven Motorsports Program to Elevate the Achievements of Women in the Traditionally Male-Dominated Fields of Motorsports and Fine Art
SONOMA, California (March 26, 2025) – TPC Racing and the Driven Artists Racing Team (DART Car) debut the No. 44 DART Car/TPC Racing McLaren Artura GT4 this weekend at Sonoma Raceway with team co-drivers Zoë Barry and Aurora Straus in the Am class of the SRO Pirelli GT4 America series.
The debuting DART Car project is a female-led, mission-driven motorsports program with the purpose of elevating the achievements of women in the traditionally male-dominated fields of motorsports and fine art.
DART Car launches this weekend with an inaugural commission by acclaimed contemporary artist Mickalene Thomas, who has created a custom livery for the team’s McLaren as well as one-of-a-kind driving suits and hand-painted helmets for Straus and Barry, who is making her professional racing debut this season.
Both the DART Car McLaren and accompanying helmets and driver suits by Thomas will be auctioned later in the season to raise funds for the next aspiring artist and driving duo to continue the team’s mission in a planned rotation to bolster the number of under-represented artists and drivers in both motorsports and fine arts.
DART Car has partnered in its initial program with race and championship winning sports car racing team TPC Racing. Led by Harris Levitas and his father Mike Levitas, TPC Racing has an accomplished resume of achievements that include a GT class win in the 2006 Rolex 24 At Daytona and a long list of team and driver championships across several different North American racing series.
Barry made her semi-pro racing debut in Porsche Sprint Challenge in 2022 and has raced the last two years in International GT as a consistent top-three finisher in the GT4 class.
Straus is a popular and accomplished American race car driver and recently made history as the first woman worldwide to win a race in Radical Cup North America. She is very familiar with the McLaren Artura GT4 and drove the first car of its kind in North America in its debut at Daytona International Speedway in 2023. Starting last in the 44-car field after early mechanical issues, Straus and her co-drivers charged to a sixth-place finish at the checkered flag.
Pirelli GT4 America teams have two days of testing Wednesday and Thursday at Sonoma to start the race weekend. Official competition begins with Friday practice with qualifying Saturday morning setting the stage for the first of two 60-minute sprint races that afternoon at 5 p.m. PDT. Sunday’s final race is set to go green at 11:35 a.m. PDT.
Harris Levitas, TPC Racing Director of Race Operations: “The TPC Racing team is honored and excited to partner with DART Car, Zoë Barry and Aurora Straus and their partners in this awesome and important new initiative. We had some encouraging showings in a limited and late-season run of races with the McLaren Artura GT4 last year in Pirelli GT4 America and were looking for the right partners to continue this progress. We have known Aurora for years and have seen promising progress in Porsche Sprint Challenge and other series from Zoë in recent seasons. We learned a lot in last week’s test at Sonoma and look forward to a great weekend ahead and doing our part to make the DART Car debut a success.”
Zoë Barry, Driver – No. 44 DART Car/TPC Racing McLaren Artura GT4: “I am incredibly excited for my debut in SRO and what we have pulled together as a team with Aurora and TPC Racing. I just turned 40 years old, and I am living out that childhood dream of becoming a professional race car driver. I am so excited to make this debut at Sonoma Raceway. I had heard how incredible the track is with the elevation changes, and I had the opportunity to test here last week. The track lived up to my expectations and everything that I had heard about it. It is my first year driving a McLaren, I am just so amazed by the power and the way that the car handles. With DART Car Project, DART stands for Driven Artists Racing Team. We commissioned world renowned contemporary artist Mickalene Thomas to design the suits, race car livery and even hand-paint our helmets. This is the first McLaren art car, and very importantly we are racing No. 44, which is a nod to the fact that only 4% of artist at auction are women and only 4% of licensed motorsports drivers are women. Our goal with the DART Car program is to really elevate underrepresented and talented individuals. For the DART Car program, success looks like inspiring one young girl to get into karting, inspiring one woman to get behind the wheel in motorsports racing, inspiring one person to collect Mickalene Thomas’s work. Sales of the Thomas designed helmet, suits and car will help fund the next DART Car Project artist commission and the next season of female pilots. For me, making my professional racing debut in SRO, this is what success looks like.”
Aurora Straus, Driver – No. 44 DART Car/TPC Racing McLaren Artura GT4: “This is an amazing program. We are creating a new project called the Driven Artists Racing Team – or DART Car project for short – and we are commissioning female and/or under-represented artists to create art in motion. Art cars, race suits, race helmets that will eventually be auctioned and the proceeds will be reinvested for the next set of drivers and artists. So, the way I look at it, is that Zoë and I are the inaugural drivers, Mickalene Thomas is the inaugural artist – who we are very grateful to have onboard – and in the future we hope to expand to a full other set of artists and drivers beyond just us. We were very fortunate to have the introduction to McLaren and the Artura GT4 and that manufacturer in general. I had raced chassis No. 001 in McLaren’s first race with the Artura at Daytona in 2023 and was extremely impressed with the platform. McLaren was the first manufacturer that came to mind for this project. Not just because we knew the car would be competitive, but really because we knew McLaren would be very amenable to being partners in a program like this. Once we knew it was McLaren, TPC Racing was, again, a really obvious choice. I have known Harris for a while now, and his dad Mike Levitas, and we saw how competitive they were with the Artura in SRO last year. And they are just great guys, a great team, super approachable and extremely straight forward. What you hear and what you see is what you get, and that’s how it should be.”
About Driven Artists Racing Team (DART Car): DART Car is a women-led, professional motorsports team partnering with contemporary female artists to design and race high-performance art cars in the world’s most prestigious auto events to standout at the highest levels of autosport competition. DART Car is comprised of fierce motorsport competitors and passionate advocates for female trailblazers. Together, with likeminded partners and sponsors, DART Car engages a global enthusiast audience in the excitement of autosport, while celebrating female achievement across the visual arts and athletics. For more information on DART Car, please visit www.DartCarProject.com.
About TPC Racing: TPC Racing is the Mid-Atlantic’s premier maintenance, service, tuning and modification center dedicated solely to Porsche sports cars. TPC Racing specializes in R&D and sales of high-performance modifications for Porsche sports cars and race cars, offering a wide range of vehicle upgrades. Best known for a line of forced induction solutions for the Porsche 911, Cayman and Boxster, a long-time focus on only one make, Porsche, has enabled TPC Racing to become experts in Porsche service, tuning, and racing. In 2000, TPC Racing began entering races under its own banner, scoring an SGS-class Championship in 2004 in the Grand-American Rolex Series and was a class winner in the 2006 Rolex 24 At Daytona, and captured the 2013 and 2016 IMSA Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA Gold Cup Championships. More information can be found at www.TPCRacing.com.
