Coleby Frye gave his car owner Tim Borror a reason to smile last weekend at Bridgeport Motorsports Park, with a win. The week earlier, however, Borror’s partner at the Sound Talent Group, Dave Shapiro, among five others, perished in a private plane crash approaching a San Diego airport.
The Sound Talent Group, who Borror, Shapiro and Matt Andersen founded, represents music acts such as Bush, Gwar , Hanson, Hinder, Sum 41 and Vanessa Carlton. Its Summer Of Loud Tour sponsors Frye’s modified.
“Nothing anyone can say would make this whole situation better,” Frye, of Dover, Pennsylvania, said. “There are still two partners of this company that are trying to mourn. We went racing to try to keep our minds off of what happened.”
Borror races, too, and helped bring the music and racing worlds together through the Sound Talent Group.
“I’m proud of that connection,” said Borror, of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. “We attached our car to the Berzerkus Festival last season. We even brought the car to the festival to further integrate the two communities. It was a tremendous success. This year, Summer Of Loud on our cars was a continuation of last year’s successful campaign.”
Frye prepares Borror’s cars. Borror invited him to drive one of his cars last season. With Frye behind the wheel, the team won at BAPS Motor Speedway earlier this year.
The Summer Of Loud Tour features Beartooth, I Prevail, Killswitch Engage, and Parkway Drive. Its schedule starts on June 21 in West Palm Beach, Florida, and runs through July 27 in Charlotte, North Carolina, with the tour crisscrossing the country in between.
Along with Shapiro, two other Sound Talent Group employees perished — Emma Lynn Huke and Kendall Fortner — as well as Dominic Christopher Damian, Celina Marie Rose Kenyon, and Daniel Williams, a former drummer for The Devil Wears Prada.
“What happened has broken my heart,” Borror said. “Losing Dave has made things in my life totally change. He was one of my favorite people on the planet.”
Fortunately, Tim Borror said the racing community has helped him get through this tough time.
“It was nice to be around family and friends,” said Borror. “It was good to try to do something normal in my life — race. To be competitive and get a win in this dark time has been good.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
