Monterey Historic Races, 8/16/08

[Cygnus]

Have been hearing about this event since junior high school, and the planets finally aligned. Drove down, had no trouble with traffic, typical foggy morning, burned off about the time we were having our first beer, rest of the day was perfect weather. But enough of that, on to the car pics:

First up, a few Can-Am cars (Saturday's events were Can-Am, T/A, and FIA sports)

 

[Cygnus]

don't start axing what everything is, I don't rightly remember

plenty of old sports cars

 

[Cygnus]

more Ferraris than you can shake a stick at. And I'm not talking Magnum P.I. stuff you see when you stop at the same Davenport restaurant as the Ferrari club; these were nice old race cars.

edit: at first, I thought these were raced-out Testarossas (the side vents are barely visible in this shot), but they are 512 boxers (so maybe that's where the Testarossa got their signature side vents).

 

[Ratters]

I was down there for that once, really entertaining and exciting. I remember watching I think it was Phil Hill in someones million dollar aston martin race car punt somebody in turn two because he didn't want to give up the line.

Speedvision used to televise the whole weekend, now they do like an hour of coverage a month later. They are the suck.

Great pics Steve.

 

[Cygnus]

I have a certain penchant for the "bundle of snakes (in the V)" exhaust, and this was the perfect place to feed that kink.

 

[Cygnus]

more old-timers (and yes, there were many many even older cars there, but they didn't grab my attention like these)

 

[Cygnus]

there many pleasant surprises throughout the day, and this (silver and red #18) Porsche 904 was one of them.

edit: IIRC, the engine in the middle is a 2-liter 4-cyl Cosworth. The size of the exhaust (and I know it's hard to judge the scale in this pic) leads me to believe it runs at seriously high revs.

 

[Cygnus]

I forget the badge on this miniature Miata forerunner was, but it was all business.

 

[Cygnus]

more Can-Am finery

 

[Cygnus]

there were F1 cars there, too, but no racing on Saturday. We did get to see Mario Andretti do a few laps in his old JPS (sorry, no pics of that in my camera).

 

[Cygnus]

and then there were the Trans Am cars. Yes, there were other makes, but I am partial to Camaros.

 

[Cygnus]

and I'm especially partial to '68 Camaros, so imagine my glee when I spotted the most storied '68 Camaro ever, Smokey Yunick's rule-bending #13.

 

[Cygnus]

of course, if you recognize that car, you probably recognize this gentlemen, Vic Edelbrock, Jr., the current custodian of #13 (shown here warming up a Boss 302 for the event).

 

[Cygnus]

another complete surprise was this six-wheeled Tyrell (how many of these can there be left?!). Walking up to it, it totally didn't compute until I was right on top of it.

 

[Cygnus]

the little Canon does fine for the pits, but admittedly is not the best for the track

morning practice

 

[Cygnus]

outside the Ferrari tent in the infield

if memory serves, the first one is a 500 Mondial. The other is a 288 GTO.

 

[Cygnus]

this is while walking through the turn 2-3-4-5 infiled parking

apparently, Z1s were the courtesy car de jour.
and then there's more Z8s lined up than exist in all of California
and a random Miura (another personal favorite, although I prefer the original pop-up headlights)
saw very few Lambos at the track.

 

[Cygnus]

so only one Miura, but two Alfa Romeo (is the model name "Superamerica"?). Not the best looking Alfa ever, but certainly not the worst.
and a Toyota 2000GT, which was reunited with Scooter Patrick, its driver from its race days, who promptly looped it (without damage, thankfully). And if you think the owner had a heart attack over that spin, don't worry, of the fifteen 2000GTs imported into the U.S., he now owns fourteen of them. Which begs the question "what's the story on the fifteenth?"

 

[Cygnus]

a couple more random pics

 

[Cygnus]

Can-Am cars in the pits

but back to the on-track action. The FIA Sports car finale included Bobby Rahal starting from the pits, trying to pass the entire field (he started there because he jumped out of the car that won the previous event, but they wouldn't let him catch the field on their warm-up lap). You might say "it's not about winning", but only if you didn't see him in the previous race.