pilgrimage

This past Saturday, V. and I drove down to Monterey to watch the Monterey Historics races, an annual event at Laguna Seca Raceway. The races feature all kinds of vintage and classic race cars and sports cars, some of which are worth a lot of money, doing actual competitive racing! It's a car guy's dream, and anyone remotely interested in cars should go at least once. It was an awesome experience for me and most likely not the last one I'll be going to.

What made it especially cool for me was the fact that Toyota was the sponsor of this year's event, and they had decided to bring their state-of-the-art 2006 TF106 F1 race car to Laguna Seca as part of their Toyota Motorsports demonstrations. It was F1 test driver Ricardo Zonta's goal to break the previous track record laptime of 1:07.722 set by Helio Castroneves several years ago in an CART racecar. Now being the big Toyota fanboy that I am, you know I wasn't going to miss an opportunity to see their F1 car up close and in person. Formula 1 only comes to the U.S. once a year, and that event is held in Indianapolis, IN. This was a truly rare chance to see the car here on the West Coast, and in action tearing it up around the world-famous Laguna Seca track.


So we arrived at the track, and managed to score some pretty decent parking fairly close to the paddock and the hill leading up to the Corkscrew. We wandered through the paddock, checked out the front straightaway for some vintage racing, and also spent some time at Turn 2, known as the Andretti hairpin. It's a great spot to watch cars come flying down the straight at maximum speed, get on the brakes hard, and do a 190 degree turn around the hairpin. Then we went for another walk through the paddock, stopped to check out the Toyota F1 car up close, and snap some photos. I tried to take as many photos as I could but after a while it gets overwhelming, there's just so much to see and take in.


Then it was time to make the big climb up to Turn 8, known as the Corkscrew. This is the most famed and iconic turn in American roadracing. Cars charge up a steep hill, brake hard, and sharply veer left into a precipitously tight S-curve that also drops away under you as you accelerate back down the hill. Crowds gathered at the Corkscrew to watch Zonta take the Toyota F1 car out for another lightning-fast lap of the track. Behind us, back over the hill, came the incredibly loud sounds of the Toyota engine as it fired up and started coming around the track.

The sound of a modern F1 engine is unforgettable: it's like a loud high pitched scream as the V8 engine reaches 19,000 RPM. The sounds grew louder and louder as it came up the hill, and then there it was, a flash of red and white screaming by as it made its way down the Corkscrew and descended the hill. As if on cue, large numbers of us all got up and made our way quickly to the other side of the hill, which is one my favorite vantage points of the track. From this side of the hill you can see nearly 2/3 of the entire track from one spot, and we all wanted to see the F1 car as it continued its way around the course. To the crowd's delight, at the conclusion of his session Zonta brought the car to a stop in front of the grandstands at the front straight, and did some nice smoky burnouts and donuts. That guy has one of the greatest jobs in the world.


Oh, and the all-time lap record? It now belongs to Zonta. He broke the record first on Friday, then on Saturday and Sunday he got faster and faster as he and the Toyota team made adjustments to the car and tires. On Sunday morning he set the fastest lap time of 1:06.309. Some racing history was made this weekend, and I am pretty stoked that I was there to see it.

-p.



My photos from the event:
http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2102781075

Ricardo Zonta's blog report describing a lap around Laguna Seca, at SpeedTV:
http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto/formulaone/31367/

Laguna Seca Raceway - official website:
http://www.laguna-seca.com/

Monterey Historics website:
http://www.montereyhistoric.com/