Team Sahlen continued to strive towards solid results at the recent Round 4 GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series presented by Crown Royal Cask No. 16 held at ROLEX Virginia International Raceway .  

The Mazda RX-8 race cars were flawless from the start of practice to the end of the race weekend, with Team Sahlen never missing a lap of time.  As the practice sessions proceeded, Team Sahlen continued to increase in speed.  The accumulation of this progression was evident in the Saturday Morning Warm-Up, were Wayne Nonnamaker placed the #43 in 4^th place in class.  

“We were very happy with the way the weekend progressed.  I am still getting used to the Mazda, but the Warm-Up on Saturday was very encouraging.  This shows that Team Sahlen can compete at the front of the highly competitive GT class.” – states Wayne Nonnamaker 

Starting in 17^th (#43) and 18^th (#42) place respectively, Joe Nonnamaker and Joe Sahlen started the race for Team Sahlen.  Both drivers made a clean start and were rolling along with the pack.  At about the 25 minute mark, Car #42 was involved an incident with a DP that was attempting an overly enthusiastic passing attempt.  This incident caused the #42 to the pits for repairs.  During the race, this incident had long term consequences of the left front wheel slowly loosening.  This forced the #42 to make several unscheduled pit stops, resulting in a 16^th place finish. 

The #43 Mazda RX-8 ran a clean 1^st half of the race.  Due to an unfortunate yellow, the team was put a lap down that it could never quite recover from to get back into the Top 10.  13^th place though was good enough to keep the #43 in the Top 10 in the ROLEX GT Team Point Standings.  Additionally, Wayne Nonnamaker  is still within 24 points of Emil Assentato in the Bob Akin Sportsman Award Standings for the GT Class. 

The next event for Team Sahlen will be the Sahlen’s 6 Hours of the Glen to be held on June 6^th at 2 pm.  The race will be televised on SPEEDTV. 

The 2010 Team Sahlen GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series presented by Crown Royal Cask No. 16 & GRAND-AM Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge Campaigns will be supported by Mazda, Mazdaspeed, HRPWorld.com, HAWK Performance, Cool Shirt, Racetech Seats, BBS, Racing Print Media, Alcon, Mothers Polish, EMCO, TheRaceSite.com, Grassroots Motorsports, Holliday Canopies, Alcon, CM Racing, Genesis Technologies, Endurance Karting, Bell Helmets, Castrol, Ianetti Design, and SpeedSource Engineering.