Report and photos by Dennis Gray<\/p>\n
The Rolex Monterey Motorsports Pre-Reunion 2013 was held August 10-11 at the 11-turn, 2.238-mile Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in Salinas, California. Formerly known as Monterey Pre-Historics, the event is held the weekend before the much larger Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion. The 2013 running of the Monterey Pre-Reunion was again open to the public, allowing spectators to enjoy a more relaxed paddock environment and a glimpse of the following weekend.<\/p>\n
The Pre-Reunion is designed to give Monterey Motorsports Reunion entrants — many of whom have never raced on the technical Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca — track time before the green flag officially drops the following weekend. Typically about 50-75% of the cars that race in the Reunion also attend the Pre-Reunion and this year was no different, with approximately 300 historic racing cars on track compared to 550 scheduled for the 2013 Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion.<\/p>\n
This year’s races will honor the 60th Anniversary of the Chevrolet Corvette, and the Collier Collection’s 1963 Grand Sport, chassis #004, was among the featured entries at the Pre-Reunion. Chevrolet’s 377 cubic inch V-8, 480+ hp answer to the Shelby Cobra was instrumented for research purposes by students of the Revs Program at Stanford, an academic program founded to study the automobile from a variety of disciplines. The team hopes to capture specific information on driver\/automobile interactions in real-life scenarios, as in what’s it really like<\/em> to navigate down Laguna Seca\u2019s famous Corkscrew in a special race car like the Grand Sport. John Morton and Bruce Canepa will be sharing driving duties in the Corvette.<\/p>\n In addition, the 50th Anniversary of the Porsche 911 will be celebrated with the Weissach Cup race exclusively for 911s from 1964-1973. Among the 911s at the Pre-Reunion were Dennis Singleton’s 1974 Porsche 911 Carrera RSR 3.0; Kevin O’Callaghan’s 1972 Porsche 911S and Bill Ockerlund’s Porsche 911 RSR.<\/p>\n Other notable and interesting entrants at the 2013 Monterey Motorsports Pre-Reunion included Chris MacAllister’s 1976 Ferrari 312 T2 and 1973 Gulf Mirage; Chip Conner’s 1980 Porsche 935J; Henry Schmitt’s 1978 BMW M1 Procar; Greg Whitten’s Jaguar E-Type Lightweight and ERA Type B ‘Romulus’; Doug Mockett’s 1976 Penske PC4; James Freeman’s Aston Martin AMR1; Tom Claridge’s 1953 Kurtis 500S; Ned Spieker’s 1961 Ferrari 250GT SWB Berlinetta; David Brown’s 1955 Cooper Type 39 Bobtail; Richard Clark’s 1952 Porsche 356 Pre-A; Ranson Webster’s 1961 Porsche Abarth Carerra; Stanley Gold’s 1952 Porsche American Roadster 356 Heuer K\/9; Erickson Shirley’s 1954 Ferrari Mondial Spider; Paddins Dowling’s 1939 Maserati 4CL; Rob Walton’s 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Berlinetta and Maserati 450S and Peter Giddings’ 1926 Delage 15-S-8 Grand Prix.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Similar to 2009<\/a>, 2010<\/a>, 2011<\/a>, and 2012<\/a>, Senior Photographer Dennis Gray also documented the 2013 Monterey Motorsports Pre-Reunion, offering the following gallery that highlights the strong list of entrants enjoying their track sessions at Laguna Seca. We split up Dennis’ 120 pictures into two galleries. The first gallery starting below features our favorite images, all displayed in the full-width view of Sports Car Digest, while the second gallery can be found on the last page of the article<\/a> and gives a comprehensive view of all the photographs.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nMonterey Motorsports Pre-Reunion 2013 \u2013 Featured Photo Gallery<\/strong><\/h4>\n