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SCCA: Nissan Scores 80th SCCA National Championship at Valvoline Runoffs

9 October 2000

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
LEXINGTON, Ohio-Nissan won its 80th SCCA National Championship at the Valvoline Runoffs this weekend and maintained its status as the auto manufacturer with the most national titles in the 37-year history of the event.

Nissan's latest champion John Olsen, of Monterey, Calif., joins the long list of Nissan winners which includes such legendary names as John Morton, Jim Fitzgerald, Elliott-Forbes Robinson, and Paul Newman.

Driving a red Nissan 200SX, Olsen started the GT4 championship race from third place. He passed pole-sitter Wilson Wright Jr. for the lead on lap 10 of the 20-lap sprint race.

"I wanted to avoid all the crazy stuff at the start," said Olsen, who dropped back to fourth place at the green flag.

"I pushed Wilson later on and it worked. He slowed and I got by. Then I kept looking in my mirror and thinking, 'I got it!, I got it!,'" continued Olsen, about his first SCCA National Championship.

The victory was especially sweet for Olsen, who plans to retire from racing to spend more time with his family. Second-place finisher Wilson Wright Jr., and the winner of the GT4 championship the past two years, plans to return next year with his Glick Nissan 200SX.

"It's a good class, a good car and I like the Nissan people," said Wright, of Stockbridge, Mass. "Everything seems to work, so we'll be back next year."

A total of 42 Nissan drivers, in eight different classes, battled for a SCCA National Championship at the 2.28-mile Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course this year.

Two of the strongest Nissan contenders for a national title were Grayson Upchurch Jr., of Alpharetta, Ga., and John Saurino, of Tulsa, Okla., who both led the most laps in their respective championship races. In a Nissan 240Z Upchurch led 16 laps of the E Production race only to be bumped off track by a competitor with less than two laps remaining. In the GT3 race John Saurino, in a Nissan 240SX, led the first 12 laps, but ended his day when he spun off track in the oil spilled by a back marker's blown engine.

Text Provided By Heather Handley

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