{"id":10992,"date":"2025-04-04T19:10:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T19:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/?p=10992"},"modified":"2025-04-04T19:10:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T19:10:00","slug":"wayne-nonnamaker-reaches-30-years-behind-the-wheel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/04\/wayne-nonnamaker-reaches-30-years-behind-the-wheel\/","title":{"rendered":"Wayne Nonnamaker reaches 30 years behind the wheel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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2025 marks the 30th<\/sup>\nseason that Wayne Nonnamaker will have been behind the wheel of a race\ncar.  Although technically Wayne did get\nhis start at a much earlier age racing Big Wheels and driving the video game POLE\nPOSITION for hour on end, his 1st<\/sup> official driving was in 1995.  This start was still at a very early age as\nWayne was just 16 and in his Junior year of High School.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In this 1st <\/sup>season\nof racing, Wayne completed his Driver\u2019s School through the SCCA.  These 2 schools were at Nelson Ledges Road\nCourse and Waterford Hills.  He was\ndriving the team\u2019s spare Mazda MX6 that his brother Will had been driving in\nthe regional SCCA Kryderacing Cup series. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From there Wayne\nprogressed to attaining his SCCA National License, and he was able to contest the\nSCCA Runoffs in 1997 in a Mazda MX6.  At\n20 years of age, Wayne was one of the youngest to ever qualify for the Runoffs\nat the time.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wayne soon progressed to\nthe Professional ranks, where in 1999 he co-drove with his brother Will to the\nMotorola Cup Touring Class Driver Championship. \nHe soon followed that crown up with another Touring class title in 2002 driving\nan Acura Integra.  Then in 2003 Wayne\nstepped up to the Grand Sports ranks and secured his 3rd<\/sup> Pro title,\nall by the age of 25.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The next step up for\nWayne was to enter the Grand American ROLEX series in 2004.  Here Wayne drove a Porsche GT3 Cup to solo GT\nclass victories at Daytona and Mid-Ohio. \nNotably, Wayne was the last racer to win a race in the ROLEX series on a\nsolo drive \u2013 with the sanctioning body soon changing the rules after this achievement.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wayne continued to\ncontest the Grand-American ROLEX series, moving from Porsches to Corvettes to\nMazda RX8s.  It was in the Rotary Rocket\nwhere Wayne secured the 2011 GT Class Bob Akin Sportsman Title.  And in 2012 Wayne co-drove with Dane Cameron\nto secure the very last worldwide Professional victory for a Rotary Motor at poignantly\nMazda Raceway Laguna Seca.  For 2013 Wayne\nstepped up to the Prototype class where he dully secured the Jim Trueman\nSportsman Title.  To this day, Wayne\nstill holds the distinction being the only driver in the 20+ year history of\nthe Sportsman Awards to have secured both the GT and Prototype Crowns.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For the past 10 years,\nWayne as been fully engaged in barnstorming the Sportsman Endurance Series with\nTeam Sahlen and securing over 50 victories. \nThis has included the Tire Rack \u2013 ChampCar Endurance Series, Summit\nRacing \u2013 American Endurance Racing, Lucky Dog Racing League presented by\nHankook Tire and the World Racing League presented by Hagerty.  And he has driven a wide variety of machinery\nto accomplish this tally: Mazda RX7, Porsche Cayman, Audi R8 GT3 Ultra, Porsche\nCayman GT4 PDK and Porsche Boxster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wayne reflects back on the past 30 seasons \u2013 \u201cI never imagined that I would still be racing all these years later.\u00a0 And to have been able to race with my Dad Joe and Brother Will is truly a blessing.\u00a0 When you are going from year to year, you are just trying to strive to the best you can.\u00a0 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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2025 Team Sahlen Campaign Partners:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

honeybeeBase.com, Malco Products, Porsche Beachwood, Discovery\nParts, ECS Tuning, Tarett Engineering, Guard Transmission, HubstandsPRO, Maxima\nRacing Oil, Pagid Brakes, NGK Spark Plugs, CM Racing Products, Grassroots\nMotorsports Magazine, Design Engineering Inc., OMP Racing, Bell Racing, Forgeline\nWheels, Optima Batteries, All-Fit Automotive, Capri Tools, Fabspeed Motorsport,\nEibach & Valco Cincinnati with Big Wrench Racing<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2025 marks the 30th season that Wayne Nonnamaker will have been behind the wheel of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11004,"href":"https:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10992\/revisions\/11004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teamsahlen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}