Posted (09/17/2012) -
In 2011, Wayne Nonnamaker duplicated the feat accomplished by his brother Will Nonnamaker by winning the Grand American ROLEX Bob Akin Award presented to the top Sportsman Driver in the GT Class.
For this season, Wayne Nonnamaker has been battling hard to retain that title. This has been difficult as he has been battling Emil Assentato for this award. And to date, Emil has had a fantastic season, already securing the GT Driver’s Championship at Mazda Raceway – Laguna Seca.
“There is a very slim chance that we can retain the title. Something has to go wrong for Emil. And were are certainly not wishing ill will for his team. But as we all saw at the Indycar finale, nothing is over until the checkered flag falls. It would be great to be a 2x recipient of this award. We will have to just wait and see how it all turns out.” – Shared Wayne Nonnamaker
Currently Emil has 3977 points to Wayne’s 3705. With a point given for each lap in the car, it will require that Wayne drive a significant portion of the race to reach this mark.
Wayne’s co-driver Dane Cameron shared his thoughts for the weekend –
“Lime rock is always a tough little track, fast, technical and very tricky in traffic. We have great momentum from a podium at Montreal and a win a Mazda raceway so I'd love to close out our GT campaign with another win before heading to DP”
Beyond the #43 entry with the “Wayne & Dane Show” – Team Sahlen will be entering 2 additional Mazda RX-8s in the ROLEX GT class this weekend. This will be the #42 entry of Joe & Wayne Nonnamaker as well as the #49 of Joe Sahlen & Will Nonnamaker. These 3 entries brings Team Sahlen’s total entries for the season to 32. This figure places Team Sahlen as the most entered team in ROLEX competition for 2012. And this is a distinction that the team achieved as well in 2011. In fact this is the 6th time Team Sahlen has been the most entered team in the series they have competed within.
The ROLEX race during the Championship weekend at Lime Rock Park. Will be a 2 hour and 45 minute event on September 29th and will be telecast live on SPEED TV at 3 pm ET.
The 2012 Team Sahlen campaign in the
GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series is supported by:
Mazda, Mazdaspeed, SimXperience, Alcon, Racetech, NGK, Cool Shirt, Racing Print Media, Mothers Polish, TheRaceSite.com, Western New York Flash, Grassroots Motorsports, ASC Industries, Iannetti Design Ideas, CM Racing, Quarter Master, BBS Wheels, MSI Racing Products, Endurance Karting and Akron Aeros