No matter your chosen moniker, Pebble Beach Automotive week or simply “Car Week”, is one of the most glamorous automotive events this side of Villa d’Este. From Gordon McCall’s kickoff event at the Jet Center where free-flowing champagne and oyster bars sit alongside Gulfstreams and Paganis to Sunday at Pebble Beach where priceless cars and period dress set the scene; the entire week is filled with exclusive, opulent events celebrating the best the automotive lifestyle has to offer. Each event has its own distinct flair, but the overarching theme is consistent: nothing less than the best will do. There is a gorgeous flow from event to event, each feeling connected in spirit and atmosphere to that which preceded it. The food, drink, and company are all picture perfect. One event, however, bucks the grandiose yet slightly sterile feel and replaces it with pure, unencumbered and unadulterated vintage racing. For most, vintage racing during car week means Thursday through Sunday’s Monterey Historics and while the Historics remain a staple, to those truly bitten by the automotive bug, the Monterey Pre-Reunion is the crown jewel. Before manufacturer tents sprout around the paddock and hospitality suites line the front-straight garages, the sounds of vintage Trans Am cars and IMSA prototypes can already be heard echoing in the hills above Seaside. Every year, the weekend before the Monterey Historics brings the best vintage racing that nobody talks about: the Pre-Reunion. A $20 at the door gets you in, and as you make your first stroll through the open paddock you will immediately understand why the initiated will never miss it.
There is no rolled ice cream nor caviar and the lone food option available is the Cruisin’ Café, which serves up good but simple ballpark food out of a stand at the edge of the paddock. Adult beverages are more Bud and less Brut. If the trademark Monterey fog has burned off, you’ll be begging for shade but unlikely to find much short of making friends with a race team and squatting in their cabana. It’s a far cry from the trademark events scattering the Monterey peninsula in a few short days, but I challenge any true automotive enthusiast to attend the “Pre’s” without enjoying every minute. In part, it’s because of the other events that the “Pre’s” work. For many both attending and racing, the next week will be spent in hospitality tents, cocktail receptions, and chef-driven multi-course meals, which makes an unencumbered day at the track a welcome calm before the storm to follow. With the events later in the week come crowds – something pleasantly absent from Laguna Seca during the Pre-Reunion. During the 2017 Pre-Reunion, my first lap of the pits had me reeling: I counted four Ferrari 250 SWBs, at least one of which was being raced that day. Only one was being admired by other spectators as I took my time capturing every detail. The general lack of crowds and slightly lower-stakes racing also means the paddock has a more relaxed atmosphere, which has facilitated many a conversation with drivers, mechanics, and owners in between sessions. While admiring a pearl white LaFerrari Aperta, a brief conversation with a gentleman in racing overalls revealed himself as the owner of the car: he was racing two vintage Aston Martin’s but the Aperta was his newest acquisition and one that would star at several events later in the week. As so many racers and spectators alike are, he is a Pre Reunion regular and I remember several previous but no less impressive iterations of his paddock garage. Familiar faces and familiar cars are a hallmark of both the Pre-Reunion, in fact.
One of my own earliest Laguna Seca memories as a child was being dropped through the window and into the driver’s seat of a Trans-Am Dodge Challenger. This chance encounter with a Monterey legend was far before I was truly able to conceptualize its significance, but I still fondly remember the moment with a 4x6 print. This particular car, a Sublime-green Challenger campaigned by Sam Posey in the 1970 Trans-Am season actually raced its first race at Laguna Seca and can still be seen regularly in both Pre-Reunion and Monterey Historics. Vintage race-cars returning to race at the tracks that brought them glory in the past is a wonderfully unique sight, but the magic of the Pre-Reunion and Monterey Historics means it’s one more common than one would think. Local automotive celebrity and patron of all things motorsport Bruce Canepa can generally be seen racing his Porsche 935, which remains the most original factory 935 in existence. This very 935 is same car that he himself raced at Laguna Seca several times between 1979 and 1981 in Trans-Am. Not all cars and drivers have a Laguna Seca provenance as strong as the Posey Challenger and Canepa’s 935, but year after year the Pre-Reunion greets me both with familiar faces and familiar cars. As a photographer, the benefits of light spectator attendance are obvious, but even for someone simply wanting to take in the sights, sounds, and smells of vintage automobile racing the sparse crowds pay incredible dividends.