Team Sahlen went into the Laguna Seca weekend preparing for another strong top 10 finish after a 10^th place showing at the New Jersey KONI event held just 2 weeks prior.  In order to prepare for the weekend, Team Sahlen entered the pre-event Test Day on Thursday.  All went well on the test day, with the #43 Mazda placing in 7^th spot.  

As practice started this trend continued with the #43 RX-8 taking 10^th in Practice Session 1, then 9^th in Session 2, and an 11^th place in Qualifying.  Then coming back with a 10^th place in morning warm up.  Unfortunately, morning warm up saw the rotary motor mysteriously die. 

With little to no time until the start of the race, the Team Sahlen crew went feverishly to work to replace the motor.  Amazingly, the crew were able to complete the task with over 30 minutes to spare. Then the most bizarre thing happened, the motor wouldn't start.  So the crew tried every angle, every crazy idea to get it started.  It got to the point that the race started, and still the motor wouldn't kick over.  Then, all of a sudden, bang, the motor kicked over.  The crew jumped into action, Joe Sahlen jumped into the car, and the #43 Mazda was off to the races, albeit 2 laps down.

"If only, if only, the car had started right away, we would have easily made the start.  But that is racing, and it was a lot better to have only missed the first few laps than to have come all the way west and not have raced at all.  It's amazing despite all that, we ended up with a 14^th place finish." - states Will Nonnamaker

The next event for the Team Sahlen #43 Mazda RX-8 racer will be at the Sahlen's 6 Hours of the Glen for the Friday evening KONI Challenge race.

The 2009 Team Sahlen KONI Challenge Series Campaign is support by HRPWorld.com, HAWK Performance, Cool Shirt, TheRaceSite.com,  Grassroots Motorsports, Holliday Canopies, CM Racing, Genesis Technologies, Endurance Karting and Mazdaspeed.