As the sports car world looks ahead to next weekend’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, the biggest endurance race of the season, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course serves as the backdrop for this weekend’s Michelin Pilot Challenge event.

Also on the schedule is the VP Racing Fuels SportsCar Challenge, which will feature nearly 20 entries across the P3 and GSX classes. Among them is the No. 29 Riley Technologies Ligier JS P320, piloted by series debutant Slade Stewart.

Stewart, who partnered with Riley Technologies for the 2026 season, is helping bring the organization back to the P3 ranks, marking Riley’s return to LMP3 competition in IMSA after several years away from the category. Riley was the last team to win an IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race in the LMP3 class, earning victory in 2023 before the category was discontinued following that season.

“Very excited to be running LMP3 with Riley, given their deep history with the platform,” Stewart said. “My partnership with them starts with SRO, moving into GT3 this year and running the BMW.”

“We knew that I just needed to accumulate some more seat time, and I had the LMP3 sitting on the side. And I said, “You guys are obviously specialists with this platform. Let’s go enter some races to up my seat time, in support of GT3, but also looking towards 2027 as I contemplate what series that I want to run in.”

“I really like the P3. It’s an amazing car to drive well. It takes a lot of hard work to drive well. And it’s also very accretive for running GT3 or any other series that I run. So that’s why we’re starting out here at Mid-Ohio. I’ve never run this track before. We came here twice over the past two weeks. We actually rented the track out just for me two weeks ago, only to show up and have the entire day rained out. So, we never actually put the car on the ground. Then, fortunately, we were able to come back last week with Apex and get a day and a half because it rained so I could learn the track and learn the car’s characteristics on the track.”

Entering this weekend’s two-round sprint event, Stewart is venturing into new territory in the P3 ranks.

After spending several seasons in GT racing, including stints in Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America and GT World Challenge America, Stewart is eager to absorb as much knowledge as possible behind the wheel of the Ligier.

“With the P3, you don’t have technology there to save you,” Stewart said. “You don’t have ABS. You’ve got a limited TC package, and you have a very, very heavy aero car. Getting used to how far you can push that aero car relative to a GT3 car and get away with it—that’s uncomfortable.”

“Coming from a GT background, you’re used to finding this lateral load, mechanical grip, and technology limit with the car before it says, ‘Nope, I’m done with you.’ The aero cars—you get to keep pushing, and the harder you push them, they become more rewarding, and that’s a very different experience.”

“You talk about tire degradation on a GT car versus an LMP3. Midway through your stint in a GT3 car, or a spec series, Trofeo, what have you, you start to know when the front end’s wearing out and when the rear end’s wearing out because they start to become unstable. The prototypes, because of their downforce, don’t provide the same negative feedback because the downforce doesn’t change through the degradation of the tire. So, you have to unlearn some GT3 expectations as it relates to driving the LMP3 car.”

Another new challenge for Stewart will be multiclass racing.

With a mix of GT4 and P3 machinery sharing the track, Stewart is intrigued by the opportunity to race alongside a variety of cars at the same time.

“It’s going to be interesting, that’s for sure,” Stewart said. “It’s definitely going to be very interesting with high-downforce cars and low-downforce cars, where we may be speed-matched in certain segments of the track, but then the P3 obviously excels through turns and in the braking zones. That’s what creates some very dynamic racing experiences.”

Although new to the series, IMSA is familiar territory for Stewart.

After previously competing in Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America, Stewart is excited to return to the IMSA paddock this weekend at Mid-Ohio.

“I’ve got four years racing under the IMSA umbrella with Trofeo,” Stewart said. “So, I know the IMSA system. I know how they operate.”

“This is my first year in SRO GT3. But being able to re-enter IMSA in the LMP3, which—that car and that platform are hands down the best bang for the buck in terms of both cost-effectiveness and challenge. The LMP3 is just an incredible car to drive.”

Along with helping reintroduce Riley to the P3 ranks, Stewart’s partnership with the team is already well underway through his GT World Challenge America campaign.

Stewart, who co-drives the No. 14 BMW M4 GT3 EVO with Andy Lee, is encouraged by the progress the program has made so far this season as he prepares to head to Road Atlanta following Mid-Ohio in search of the team’s first podium finish of the year.

“I couldn’t be happier with Riley Motorsports,” Stewart said. “Everybody knows their deep and rich history in the motorsports and racing industry. As I was looking across the landscape for a new team as I decided to move into GT3 with Andy Lee. We interviewed a number of teams, and it became very evident very quickly that there was only one team to partner with, and that was Bill Riley and the Riley-KellyMoss group.”

“We obviously had a bumpy start in Sonoma. We’ve been working really hard ever since. We just got done testing at Road Atlanta. We’re very, very happy with where the car is today, and we’re excited to go to battle next week at Road Atlanta.”

While Stewart may be new to SRO’s GT3 platform, his iconic looking livery is not.

Sparklefarts, a pink unicorn inspired design, is one of the eye-catching designs that has become well-known in the sportscar paddock. Many teams have taken similar approaches with a special character theme, and for Stewart, it has a family connection.

“I started with Sparklefarts, and it didn’t have a name,” Stewart said. “I started with that scheme 10 years ago. My daughter was six or seven, and she designed it back when I was racing Subaru BRZs in Club Sport. This started out as just something between my daughter and me. I’ve got five kids, and my oldest is a girl. I told her, ‘Dad’s moving up to the big stage, and as my oldest girl and the biggest car, you get to pick the scheme.’ She said, ‘Well, Daddy, it’s got to be the pink unicorn car.’ And I’m like, ‘No, honey. Please no. Please no.’ But she saw the resistance, and she’s hard-headed like that. She said, ‘Nope, it has to be.’ So I said, ‘Okay.’”

“When I came to IMSA in Trofeo and LB Cup, our head of marketing at the time said, ‘We need to give it a name.’ And I said, ‘You’re right.’ We did, and Sparklefarts stuck. Long story short, it’s become so much more than that.”

“To see the fans flock to the car, and we invite them into the garages and put them in the car and talk to them about the sport. At the end of the day, it’s about trying to get people—from kids to teenagers all the way on up—interested in the sport in some capacity, one way or another because if we don’t as participants in the sport work really hard to drive engagement, there’s a whole lot of other pressures in the world that would like to see this sport go away.”

“They’ve never been to a race. They don’t see this mobile economy that shows up at racetracks across America, where thousands of people fly in to do their jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment show up on semis, set up, run a business for a weekend, pack back up, get back on the road, and move to a new town. This industry puts food on people’s tables, pays mortgage payments, and helps support families. But most people don’t understand it. They just think it’s people out racing race cars. They have no understanding of the totality of the racing economy and what it does for people’s livelihoods.”

So Sparklefarts is a car, but we use it when we’re not at the racetrack to help stimulate engagement, inspire people, and help create the next generation of participants, one way or another, in the sport and in the industry.”

For the weekend ahead and the remainder of the season, Stewart is focused on continuing to improve while finding success along the way. At the same time, he views this season as an opportunity to prepare for a potentially expanded racing schedule in 2027.

“This weekend with LMP3 here at Mid-Ohio, it’s my first race,” Stewart said. “It’s about being conservative, doing well, racing competitively, and having fun. The rest of the season is to continue to try and punch above our weight, work hard, perform well, and continue to put points on the board.”

“We’ve got a couple of other races on the list that don’t conflict with our SRO schedule. Then we’ll be taking a look toward 2027 with Riley on what different series we’re going to run, because we’re going to be running multiple series next year, and what that’s going to look like in terms of both series and platforms.”

 

Images Courtesy to Riley/Slade Stewart