2025 marks the 30th season that Wayne Nonnamaker will have been behind the wheel of a race car. Although technically Wayne did get his start at a much earlier age racing Big Wheels and driving the video game POLE POSITION for hour on end, his 1st official driving was in 1995. This start was still at a very early age as Wayne was just 16 and in his Junior year of High School.
In this 1st season of racing, Wayne completed his Driver’s School through the SCCA. These 2 schools were at Nelson Ledges Road Course and Waterford Hills. He was driving the team’s spare Mazda MX6 that his brother Will had been driving in the regional SCCA Kryderacing Cup series.
From there Wayne progressed to attaining his SCCA National License, and he was able to contest the SCCA Runoffs in 1997 in a Mazda MX6. At 20 years of age, Wayne was one of the youngest to ever qualify for the Runoffs at the time.
Wayne soon progressed to the Professional ranks, where in 1999 he co-drove with his brother Will to the Motorola Cup Touring Class Driver Championship. He soon followed that crown up with another Touring class title in 2002 driving an Acura Integra. Then in 2003 Wayne stepped up to the Grand Sports ranks and secured his 3rd Pro title, all by the age of 25.
The next step up for Wayne was to enter the Grand American ROLEX series in 2004. Here Wayne drove a Porsche GT3 Cup to solo GT class victories at Daytona and Mid-Ohio. Notably, Wayne was the last racer to win a race in the ROLEX series on a solo drive – with the sanctioning body soon changing the rules after this achievement.
Wayne continued to contest the Grand-American ROLEX series, moving from Porsches to Corvettes to Mazda RX8s. It was in the Rotary Rocket where Wayne secured the 2011 GT Class Bob Akin Sportsman Title. And in 2012 Wayne co-drove with Dane Cameron to secure the very last worldwide Professional victory for a Rotary Motor at poignantly Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. For 2013 Wayne stepped up to the Prototype class where he dully secured the Jim Trueman Sportsman Title. To this day, Wayne still holds the distinction being the only driver in the 20+ year history of the Sportsman Awards to have secured both the GT and Prototype Crowns.
For the past 10 years, Wayne as been fully engaged in barnstorming the Sportsman Endurance Series with Team Sahlen and securing over 50 victories. This has included the Tire Rack – ChampCar Endurance Series, Summit Racing – American Endurance Racing, Lucky Dog Racing League presented by Hankook Tire and the World Racing League presented by Hagerty. And he has driven a wide variety of machinery to accomplish this tally: Mazda RX7, Porsche Cayman, Audi R8 GT3 Ultra, Porsche Cayman GT4 PDK and Porsche Boxster.
Wayne reflects back on the past 30 seasons – “I never imagined that I would still be racing all these years later. And to have been able to race with my Dad Joe and Brother Will is truly a blessing. When you are going from year to year, you are just trying to strive to the best you can. Looking back though now on all of these years, it amazes me what we as a Team and Family have been able to accomplish in Endurance Sports Car Racing.”
2025 Team Sahlen Campaign Partners:
honeybeeBase.com, Malco Products, Porsche Beachwood, Discovery Parts, ECS Tuning, Tarett Engineering, Guard Transmission, HubstandsPRO, Maxima Racing Oil, Pagid Brakes, NGK Spark Plugs, CM Racing Products, Grassroots Motorsports Magazine, Design Engineering Inc., OMP Racing, Bell Racing, Forgeline Wheels, Optima Batteries, All-Fit Automotive, Capri Tools, Fabspeed Motorsport, Eibach & Valco Cincinnati with Big Wrench Racing
