Anyone here attending the Monterey Historics vintage race at Laguna Seca this weekend? I am in Los Angeles on business all this week (and thankful for hotels with free 'net access!) and found out that the biggest vintage race in the US is this weekend and several hours north of here. I have wanted to attend for years and this is my chance.

An airline change fee and some rescheduling and now I'll be going there both days then flying home on Monday morning. Anyone else going or can recommend good places to watch at Laguna Seca? Hopefully I can find a hotel room not too far away or painfully expensive. No expereince at Laguna so any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CRX Lee &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Hopefully I can find a hotel room not too far away or painfully expensive.</TD></TR></TABLE>

LOL! Seriously, though, you may be able to find a room if someone cancels, but as I'm sure you've found out, many/most hotels and motels have a 3 or 4 night minimum and inflated rates for this weekend.

As for spectating at Laguna Seca, I don't think that there is a bad spot.

 

two best spots to watch a race at laguna is on the hill side at turn 2, the andretti hairpin. if you sit up high enough, you can see pretty much the whole track except the back area around the corkscrew, and finish line. but you can get a glimpse of the last turn, i think its 11, so all the exciting parts are visible. the second place is of course the corkscrew. but youre really just limited to viewing the corkscrew, and aside from the occasional off, or down in the case of motorcycle racing, it gets old. but its worth the hike. and i do mean a serious *hike* up that damn hill. actually, just hanging out in the observation tower is ok too if you have access, which is open during scca events.

summarize:
andretti hairpin
corkscrew
observation tower

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CRX Lee &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> Hopefully I can find a hotel room not too far away or painfully expensive.</TD></TR></TABLE>
Yeah, ha! Seriously, Tim is up there. Call me at the office and I'll give you his cell phone number: 386-673-4148.

 

Assuming you are flying into San Jose, stay in a hotel there on Friday and Sunday night and beg Tim for floor space on Saturday night. It's going to be hard to find anything in Carmel or Monterey this late in the game. Enjoy!

 

Lucky man.
I had tickets for Sunday but couldn't get off of work.

My favorite place to watch at laguna is the corkscrew.
The observation tower on the main straight is pretty good too, but usually crowded.

 

I believe Littleton said he was racing there, instead of the Honda Challenge Nationals.

 

Lee do you need a ticket, I have an extra. If you want you can stay with me but I live near Sears Point about 1 3/4 hours away.

Don't worry about the track just stay in the pits and see all the cars up close!

 

can't wait for this weekend... going to be great.

While you're in the neighborhood... be sure to stop by Cannary Row, in downtown Monterey, late afternoon till night time.... the main street is just going to be littered with old school ferraris, newer ferraris, and vintage everything... i can't wait!

also local canyons are a site to behold... not too often you'll see old guys in their F40's, porsches, all going off in the canyons....


good luck with hotels...
we're too broke, so we're sleeping in our cars! lol

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Fastom &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Don't worry about the track just stay in the pits and see all the cars up close!</TD></TR></TABLE>

So true, always many beautiful cars to see up close in the pits.

If anyone has seen the "Victory by Design, Alfa Romeo" about half of the cars were filmed in the Monterey/Laguna Seca area. All the really awesome cars, of course.

 

Hey everyone, I just returned from the Historics. Let me just hit some quick highlights and then I'll post some pics etc.. Later on in the week.

Highlights:

The car 550 Pre-A spyder qualified 6th and we finished 4th overall out of 32 cars in group 4A.

Since Ferrari was the featured manufacture this year, Ferrari brought MS 2003 (5 GP Win) F1 car, the F1 2002, F1 2001, 2000, 1998 and 1997 Formula 1 cars. For those who don't understand, it's been about 12 years since Ferrari was the featured manufacture at the Historics.

Ferrari brought the 4th F1 test driver Adreina behind Luca to run the 2003 car. All 6 cars took to the track at the same time on Sat for practice. Two of the cars were rented out from Ferrari and one of those renters lifted in turn 6 at a high rate of speed. Well enough said, you'll have to watch SpeedTV to see the results of lifting at turn 6 at Monterey.

I wish I could write more, I'm jet lagged, just returned back from the Red Eye flight. I'll post some pics later on in the week.

Seeing 50k plus fans from the paddock on Sat and Sun was a thrill. I'll never ever top this experience.


Modified by Littleton at 10:18 AM 8/16/2004

 

More Pics to come. The print shop only had some of the black and white's done. I have more photo's to come. In color as well. This first car is a Honda.











to be continued....

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Littleton &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">More Pics to come. ...
to be continued....</TD></TR></TABLE>

Looking forward to more pics!

 

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by TeamSlowdotOrg &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"></TD></TR></TABLE>

How is he not dead?

 

WHAT. ON. EARTH. HAPPENED?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Sean O’Gorman &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">WHAT. ON. EARTH. HAPPENED?</TD></TR></TABLE>
I was not there, but I've seen some other photos. F2002 (is what I heard) spun to the inside of T6. Nosed into the wall and spun back across the track. It was a privately owned car, so who knows how it was maintained. Not very well, I guess.

The dude walked away without a scratch. Freaky.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Sean O’Gorman &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">WHAT. ON. EARTH. HAPPENED?</TD></TR></TABLE>

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Littleton &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Two of the cars were rented out from Ferrari and one of those renters lifted in turn 6 at a high rate of speed. Well enough said, you'll have to watch SpeedTV to see the results of lifting at turn 6 at Monterey.
</TD></TR></TABLE>


reading... priceless.

 

1957 Ferrari Testa Rosa

 

Check out the F1 photos at http://www.montereyhistoric.com if you are interested.

 

Ferrari needs to go back to blood red

Brian

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Brian*Blue95M3 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Ferrari needs to go back to blood red

Brian</TD></TR></TABLE>

Tell that to Marlboro. From what I heard, the plan now is once Tobacco advertising is banned in the EU, they are going to leave the cars as they are now w/o the Marlboro logo, because they feel the recognition is high enough that people will still think Marlboro.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SJR &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">


reading... priceless. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Give me a break, once I see all those pictures of the pretty race cars, I scroll right past all the words and then post my comments.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by TeamSlowdotOrg &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"></TD></TR></TABLE>


Great Pic SlowdotOrg. Funny how his left foot is still on the brake. Was he still moving when you grabbed that shot?

 

I just got back in the office today from a week in LA ending up at the Historics. I put 1,175 miles on my Alero rental cars but it was worth it. I have 150 digital pics taken on Sunday (camera was FUBAR on Saturday) around the paddock and up at the Corkscrew. I will try to have them put up on the Koni web site somewhere when our IT gets back from vacationing in Florida on Monday.

I got a cheap hotel room up in Gilroy for about $75 per night but had about a 35 mile each way drive. Didn't have Internet access after Thursday morning so I didn't get to see people's posts. I did get to have some beers and dinner with the Grassroots Motorsports staff, otherwise I didn't know many folks there.

The cars were very cool, I had not realized how much I had not known or forgotten about the various models and engines of older Ferraris. After seeing so many GTs, prototypos and barchettas they seem to run together after a bit. I was busy investigating the Devins there (10 that I saw) and it has me itching to dig into my 327 Chevy powered Devin. So many Lotus 23s, early Porsches, 427 Cobras, etc. that they started to meld together and almost seem not be so special anymore. To see a Ferrari 250 GTO anywhere else would have you jump out of your skin, but to see 18 of them together was something else. Do you like the '57 Ferrari 250 Testarossa? There were 5 on track at once! A friend and I were guessing that paddock had a legitimate half a billion or more dollar value. One of the 4 liter 250 GTOs there was recently bought for $12 million alone. I don't know what my favorite car there was, I guess with that much overload it gets hard to judge. There was a 1958 Ferrari Formula 1 car that was about the second year they ran Koni shocks so i made sure to get photos of that. I was surprised that there were no early Trans Am or Can Am cars but maybe there wasn't really room.

I spent some time with friends there who had an ex-Augie Pabst Meister-Brauser livery Chapperal Mk. I (race winner Saturday)and a Ferrari 512 F (4th on Sunday) and watched a little from their transporter roof behind the pit lane. Most of the rest of the time I was in the paddock or up in the Corkscrew or wearing out my bum knee on the big hill in between.