Friday at Laguna Seca (now Mazda Raceway) was the time trials for the historic car races and Saturday the first half of the actual races with qualifying in the morning and races in the afternoon.  When they used to go years ago, Rob and Daryl always liked to get to the track when it opened to walk through the paddock and see everyone uncovering their cars.  It is easier to see everyone and talk to the drivers when the crowds are smaller.  They dragged poor Doug and Marilyn along at the crack of dawn, while the rest of the group were more civilized and turned up several hours later.  The Corvettes had a parking corral at Turn 5, with a good view of a large part of the track.  The largest problem with the whole day was that it was one of the coldest days they had seen at the Historics in years and everyone was freezing.

The first car we saw was the new Bugatti Veyron, the red and black model which had just clocked 268 mph on the VW test track in Essen, Germany the previous week.  This actual car now holds the world land speed record for production automobiles.  They will build only 5 of this model and will tune them so that they only go 258 mph because of potential problems with the tires at 268 mph.  All 5 are already sold.  This car was the pace car for the Bugatti lap, the 4th race of the day, leading a field of 1920-1930 models.

There were a good number of Corvettes in the race field, competing in various engine capacity classes.  Doug must have talked to at least half of the owners that morning.  It took the second part of the group a long time to get to the paddock because all of the vendors were open and showing their wares.  Glenn met the author of a book he has really enjoyed and somehow the guys ended up with autographed copies.  What a champ!  The food vendors were busy, offering breakfast burritos to the early comers and selections from California Pizza Kitchen, Southwest Quesadillas, Asian foods, and much more.  Not to be missed were the Frog Dogs.  Again...food for all.

Everyone drifted up to the Corral when the races started.  Unfortunately, it was cold and windy, even in the sun. Reeves Callaway turned up with two additional Callaway Corvettes, one of which is the new and powerful version with different styling.  A young guy arrived in his Bugatti Veyron (not the 268mph version, but still....) and was annoyed that he was not automatically allowed into the VIP parking area and was "stuck with a bunch of Corvettes".  We were going to ask him to pay $10 like we did. 

Dinner was in Carmel at the "Forge in the Forest", in celebration of Glenn and Patti's 39th aniversary.  Again parking was the worst part as Carmel has limited street parking and the restaurants don't have their own lots.  We all shared the restaurant's famous chocolate chip cookie desserts in honor of the happy couple and vowed to all meet there again in 39 years.