Birmingham: Team Sahlen race report

Team Sahlen captures 2 Top Tens and SUN TRUST Most Improved Award at Barber

Team Sahlen had their best all around weekend of the 2008 Season at the Barber Motorsports Park race weekend. The #43 finished in 8th place. Plus, the #42 racer finished in 9th place, and captured the coveted SUN TRUST Most Improved Award. This is the 3rd event in 2008 that Joe Sahlen and Will Nonnamaker have captured the award for moving up the most spots in the race.

The tone for the weekend was set in Practice Session #1, with Wayne Nonnamaker setting the 5th fastest time in GT. This trend continued as Team Sahlen placed in 9th in P3 and 8th in P4. Then in Qualifying, Joe Nonnamaker secured 14th on the full 21 Car GT grid.

"All the testing and development that the team has been working towards really is starting to pay off for the team. The crew has been working extra hard every weekend to get us to this point." - states Joe Nonnamaker

At the start of the race, Joe Nonnamaker and Joe Sahlen steered their Corvettes clear of any mishap and drove a very solid race. When the mandatory 45 minute pit stop arrived, Wayne and Will Nonnamaker took over the controls of the #43 and #42 racers respectively.

"I just kept taking each lap one at a time. When we pitted on lap 25, we had already moved up 10 spots overall. Just surviving those laps with the heat was difficult." - stated Joe Sahlen

Wayne and Will soon started carving their way through traffic. An unfortunate yellow caused the duo to be a lap down, but this didn't stop them from being the top GT cars one lap down at the end of the race.

"We were able to run comfortably with the GT cars on the lead lap. The heat was very atrocious, but everyone on track was suffering from the same situation. It gives us a lot of excitement for the remaining races. I can hardly wait for Montreal." - states Wayne Nonnamaker

-credit: ts