Taylor won the 1986 South African National Drivers Championship. In 1987, he finished fourth in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. He moved to the FIA World Sportscar Championship, competing in the C2 class in 1988 and the C1 class in 1989. He also competed in the IMSA Camel GT series from 1989 through 1993. From 1991 through 1993, he was one of the lead drivers for the Intrepid RM-1 GTP program.
Taylor won the IMSA WSC class in 1994, with second-place finishes in the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring. He also won the 1996 24 Hours of Daytona and 1996 12 Hours of Sebring with Scott Sharp and Jim Pace in a Riley & Scott Mk III Oldsmobile. Taylor was once more IMSA WSC champion in 1996. In 1998 he won Petit Le Mans and the prototype class in the 24 Hours of Daytona.
Taylor competed in the American Le Mans Series in 1999. From 2000 to 2002, he was a central part of the Cadillac Le Mans effort. This effort was handled by his long-time technical partner Bob Riley in 2000. The chassis program was moved to England and an updated car was built for 2001, followed by a completely new car, the LMP-02, in 2002. The program was not successful against Audi's R8, so GM discontinued it. Taylor continued with Cadillac in the Speed World Challenge CTS-V effort.
With Max Angelelli, Taylor was co-champion in the Daytona Prototype category of the 2005 Grand American Road Racing Association Rolex Sports Car Series, and the pair also took the overall win in the 24 Hours of Daytona. In 2006, Taylor and Max Angelelli made IROC Series history by becoming the first tandem of drivers to compete in one car during an IROC season. They each raced two races and points were combined for their tally.
In mid-2006, Taylor announced a split with car builder Bob Riley and formed Wayne Taylor Racing for the 2007 season with continued backing from SunTrust, and Max Angelelli as co-driver. The team is based in Indianapolis. Early in 2007, Taylor stepped away from full-time driving. Michael Valiante teamed up with Angelelli full-time in 2008. Taylor continues to drive in long distance events. The team continued to field Riley Chassis in 2007 before switching to the new Dallara chassis after the 2008 24 Hours of Daytona. In May 2008, the team's transporter caught fire, destroying the new Dallara and all of their equipment. The team fielded their old Riley with borrowed equipment until a new Dallara could be built. On 23 August, the team scored their first win of the year and the first for Dallara in Grand-Am at Infineon Raceway California.
Taylor's team won its second Grand-Am championship in 2013 with Max Angelelli co-driving with his son Jordan Taylor. Wayne's older son Ricky Taylor is also a Grand-Am regular and was Angelelli's regular teammate until Jordan replaced him in 2013.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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