Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion 2019

Warmup in front of Bruce Canepa's compound — Warmup in front of Bruce Canepa’s compound. (From L-R): 962-102, an IMSA AAR Toyota HF89, 962-F01 Wynn’s car, and Bruce’s Schuppan chassis

It may have taken place just over a week ago, but the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion 2019 was another top-drawer event that should be celebrated for the manner in which it has lifted the profile of yesterday’s great race cars. The growth in historic race reunions, revivals, festivals and the like over the last few years has offered the race-going public the opportunity to enjoy those cars that entertained many thousands of spectators around the world in decades gone by.

Typical Laguna Seca weather, early morning fog

This year’s Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion was held over the weekend 15-18 August, where IMSA celebrated its 50th anniversary of premier sports car racing. Such an important milestone cannot go unnoticed, as our review of the book IMSA 1969-1989 written by Mitch Bishop and Mark Raffauf, will confirm. Not only were the cars to be celebrated, but on hand was IMSA driving legend Hurley Haywood, whose career successes include three 24 Hours of Le Mans titles and five Rolex 24 at Daytona wins, amongst many, many other top victories – you can read a review of Hurley’s autobiography here, Hurley – From the Beginning.

Special guests included nine-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner, Tom Kristensen; Formula 1 Champion Mika Häkkinen; Former Formula 1 race winner and 2015 WEC World Champion Mark Webber; Scott Pruett, five-time overall winner at the Rolex 24 at Daytona; Parker Johnstone; Tommy Kendall; and, Billy Johnson amongst others. So, there was almost as much to see and hear in the paddock as there was on track.

Part of the weekend included some seminars put on by IMSA. Here is one of the best ones – Emcee was Mark Raffauf, and the discussion was on IMSA prototypes

Our man at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion this year was regular contributor, Martin Raffauf, who has provided all of the accompanying images with the detailed captions. While we would have loved to bring you a shot of each of the 550 cars, this would not have been practical. So, we have selected a cross-section of images to give our readers a ‘flavour’ of the event…we hope you enjoy your walk through the gallery below: