
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.

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.

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:
















Written by: Martin Raffauf (with Introduction by Glen Smale)
Images by: Martin Raffauf
550 Spyder is a one off replica
I had a suspicion that it might be a replica, thanks for correcting that!