It’s full Friday at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca for the second of four days of the Second Annual Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion. All 17 groups practice/qualify, with Group A in the morning and Group B in the afternoon. At 11am, the cars doing The Quail Run will be starting from the race track. During the lunch hour there will be VIP rides, exhibition laps and the like.
The new electronics on the Trylon (scoring beacon tower) were given a trial run Friday morning, but were put to bed before I get a photo of their trick numbers. In bright red and green will be continuously rotating information while cars are on course – car number, position in pack, speed, etc. It will be used starting Saturday afternoon for races, and again Sunday afternoon.
The telemetry for front straight speed is in place, and it’s setup past Start-Finish. So the mph numbers flashing on the screen on top of the Start-Finish crossover bridge are after the fact. This means cars coming from Turn Eleven will see how fast the cars went ahead. It’s not like the CHP radar gun on Highway 68 leading into the track, where it’s aimed at you and gives instant feedback on your speed. The fastest speed I recorded on the sign was 127 mph.
I had under-information Thursday on a special D Type Jaguar, so here’s the real story. The number #86 BRG Jag is a 1955 Hagemann Special, built by the late JACK HAGEMANN, who recently passed away. The car is owned by RON LAUREI, who’s raced the car for the past thirty years at the Laguna historic races. For the past ten years, BERNARD JUCHLI has been driving the car. Juchli works for the Jay Leno collection. Juchli also drives Laurie’s white No.34 1976 Chevron F2. Those cars reside at The Candy Store in Burlingame CA.
The transporter is covered with vinyl wrapped graphics depicting the Chevron. A Southern California company specializes in these kinds of wraps, as do others companies which are springing up. There are several fine examples of their work in the paddock this weekend.
