It's Time To End The Monterey Historics

Jack Baruth
by Jack Baruth

Don’t look now, but it’s starting. The Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, often called the “Monterey Historics” by those in the know and simply “Monterey” by people who maintain a sort of willful, deliberate ignorance of anything else happening at Laguna Seca for the rest of the year, will be casting its usual ghoulish pall over the world of automotive enthusiasm this weekend.

Founded by Steve Earle (the non-famous Steve Earle, mind you, not the fellow who once said that thing about Townes and Dylan) four decades ago, the event was quasi-hijacked away from its founder a few years back and now exists primarily as a way for rich guys to show off their cars and for mass-market manufacturers like Cadillac to spend money blathering about their heritage to a bunch of people who hold them in utter and complete contempt.

Neither a race nor a car show, the Historics offer fans of vintage race cars a chance to see them prancing around a racetrack in the hands of their incompetent owners and/or some arrive-and-drive pros who are desperately hungry for meal money, sponsorship opportunities, or whatever distant echoes of former adulation they can coax from the aging crowd. In this sense, the event is utterly harmless and probably even interesting, the same way that the Ault Park Concours or Pebble Beach can be interesting. With that said, the effect that the Monterey Historics and events like it have on modern-day racing is far from harmless. For that reason alone, it’s time to call time on this annual exhumation, this dumb show of days best left to rest, this sad parade of vehicles that often amount to little more than George Washington’s axe with wheels.

What’s wrong with historic “racing”? What’s the problem with bringing the old cars out, keeping them running, giving people a chance to see them on the move instead of gathering dust in a museum? How could even the bitterest misanthrope complain about an event that makes so many people happy? On the surface, nothing. But consider this: all of that energy, all of that effort, all of that near-infinite funding put into vintage cars and vintage racing has to come from somewhere. It cannot have escaped the intelligent reader’s attention that modern racing has suffered a cliff-face decline even as historic and vintage “racing” has gone from strength to well-sponsored strength.

The above state of affairs is no accident. Time and again, I’ve heard enthusiasts perorating on the superiority of vintage racers to their modern-day counterparts. “You could see the drivers working behind the wheel!” Or, “Back then, computers didn’t drive the car!” Perhaps the most valid criticism: “Nobody was afraid of innovation! Instead of a bunch of spec series, you had everybody trying everything, from six-wheel F1 cars to the turbocharged 917!” You know what? They’re right. About all of it. A few months ago, I had the chance to be in a workshop with one of the original 917K racers, and I was struck quite speechless by it. Compared to the modern LeMans hybrids or the various spec-ish prototypes out there, the 917K (or, indeed, any of its contemporaries) has authentic and everlasting star power. This was the car that was in LeMans. It was one of the cars that ran down an unfettered Mulsanne Straight limited only by the laws of physics and Porsche’s ingenuity in bending those laws. Who wouldn’t want to see it driving around?

Yet this perceived superiority of vintage racing to modern competition is a self-fulfilling prophecy if we continue to put our attention, time, and money in the past. The men who built and campaigned the 917K didn’t spend their time mooning over the bad-ass prewar Benzes. Their minds were focused on victory in the present day. Just as importantly, the minds of the enthusiast public were right there with them. There wasn’t any historic racing of any consequence back then. People would have laughed at you, were you to bring the idea up in public. Vintage racing? Might as well get the guys from the 1924 Olympics out and make ’em run around the track! In 1970, everybody was 100-percent focused on racing in 1970.

The problem is that in 2016, we still seem to be obsessed with 1970. Or 1950, or 1986, or whenever. And this particular affectation seems to primarily afflict sports-car racing. NASCAR fans and (to a lesser degree) F1 fans are perfectly content to focus on the current day. They might talk about “Big E” or Senna vs. Prost from time to time, but it’s Dale Jr. or Rosberg vs. Hamilton that has their attention in the current day. The sports-car crowd, by contrast, arrives in standing-room-only droves for Monterey but then can’t be bothered to turn out for an IMSA race.

Listen, if any human being in their world is aware of the megawatt power of sentimentality, it’s me. I was one of the early participants in the vintage bicycle motocross scene 15 years ago, even as I was trying to wrap up a career racing the modern bikes of the time. I know how safe, how comforting, it is to live in the past. I know the seductive appeal of idolizing the pay drivers and no-hopers of the past (not to mention any names) while being thoroughly dismissive of their modern-day counterparts. I know how disappointing modern races can be, how stupid the sanctioning bodies and rulemakers can be, how tempting it is to voluntarily exist in a world where the manufacturers didn’t feel the need to worship the golden calves of hybrid tech or diesel power or push-to-pass or DRS or venturi restrictors or SAFER barriers.

Still, we’ll never make modern-day racing better if we can’t stop looking behind. There are stories in modern-day racing waiting to be discovered, stories just as thrilling as anything in the old books and magazines. But we won’t find them if we don’t look for them, and we won’t look for them if our noses are buried up the dusty chuff of history. Leave history to the historians; let’s all get together and make, or witness, a new history of our very own.

[Image: Tim Hill via Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, Brian Snelson (originally posted to Flickr as 1970 Porsche 917K) [ CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons]

Jack Baruth
Jack Baruth

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  • DirtRoads DirtRoads on Aug 29, 2016

    Here's the thing. You can watch today's races on YouTube or elsewhere on the internet, so why bother going to them? However, if you want to actually see something rare with your own eyes, you have to go to the event where the rare stuff is. I don't go to SeaTac to see a B-29. But I went to Maranello to see Schumi's winningest F1 car of all time. And I love the sound of cars from my childhood. That's it. It's not a racing event. It's a nostalgia event, with the sights and sounds and smells of those old cars. I pulled into the garage today in my old C4 and could smell the hot engine and tires, and I thought, "Ahh, there's that smell I've loved for so many years." You can't get that today. Remember the old dirt bike races, the ones where you could walk around on the track, and you smelled that Klotz 2-stroke oil all over? When was the last time you smelled that stuff? Ages, man. But it brings back waves of memories. That's what it's all about. Get another 10 years behind you and maybe you'll see it differently. Maybe I'm too old to give a damn about the nostalgia of 2046, so I don't go to today's races. Who can afford the tickets anyway?

  • Flipper35 Flipper35 on Aug 31, 2016

    But you can afford to take the kids to a vintage race at someplace like Road America and they have decent races and you get to walk through the pits and talk to the drivers and see the cars up close. The kids don't like the circle track races but enjoy these. They may like a Trans-Am or SCCA but you don't have the access and the prices are higher. Plus, I think the guys that run Trans Am are idiots.

  • Joe This is called a man in the middle attack and has been around for years. You can fall for this in a Starbucks as easily as when you’re charging your car. Nothing new here…
  • AZFelix Hilux technical, preferably with a swivel mount.
  • ToolGuy This is the kind of thing you get when you give people faster internet.
  • ToolGuy North America is already the greatest country on the planet, and I have learned to be careful about what I wish for in terms of making changes. I mean, if Greenland wants to buy JDM vehicles, isn't that for the Danes to decide?
  • ToolGuy Once again my home did not catch on fire and my fire extinguisher(s) stayed in the closet, unused. I guess I threw my money away on fire extinguishers.(And by fire extinguishers I mean nuclear missiles.)
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