Autoblog

The track action at Laguna Seca can be so overwhelming that we figured we'd break up the galleries a bit. This post will feature nothing but on-track competition and a couple of ambiance shots from Saturday's sessions. Seven classes ran then and another seven will be heading out on Sunday. There are completely different cars in each set, so we'll try to get somebody out there for Sunday's racing as well. Rather than trying to cover every car in every group at every corner, we picked about 60 favorite shots from about 4 or 5 groups. Click away.

This was the 34th Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races, and Toyota was back as title sponsor. We missed most of their demonstration runs but can honestly say they are great hosts. Lexus pace cars and free survival packs for everybody that wanted them were a nice touch. As we told you before, Indy cars from 1957's Roadster era were highlighted because Laguna Seca is also celebrating its 50th anniversary of operations. The Race of Legends was also run Saturday and after some fender-banging close action, it came down to the wire and Derek Bell eked it out over a hard-charging Bobby Rahal. Emerson Fittipaldi was third. The most notable thing about the race besides the fact that Vic Elford got punted into the kitty litter at turn 11, is that $25,000 will go to a charity in Bell's name as the champion. Unfortunately, we didn't get any good pics of that because the media center decided to serve lunch at that time. But it looked thrilling on the monitors.