Story & Photos by Ben Kuhl
The Story of Laguna Seca starts with a loss…
In 1956, racer Ernie McAfee was killed while competing in the Pebble Beach Road Races. He was driving a Ferrari 121 LM, fast and unforgiving, when it left the narrow tree-lined course and struck a pine in the Del Monte Forest. His death was a reckoning—one of those moments when the danger that all racers accept comes to becomes a tangible reality.
The Pebble Beach races were shut down. And from that silence, something new emerged: Laguna Seca—a place not just carved for speed, but for survival. A proper road course, built on land borrowed from U.S. Fort Ord, where soldiers once drilled and marched. What was once a seasonal lake—”Laguna Seca,” the dry lagoon—would now hold the weight of a sport learning how to grow up without forgetting where it started.
Today, every August, the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion beckons the past to come forward like an old radio signal—half static, half song. Cars from every era arrive not just to chase points or podiums, but to keep something alive. Noise, yes—but also names: Shadow. Tyrrell. Ferrari. McLaren. Offenhausers whine and Cosworths scream. It’s not just nostalgia for a time past, not to repeat again but a yearly communion with what was and still is–in vintage racing.
The Formula 1 cars arrive like time travelers with unfinished business—Lotus, Brabham, McLaren, Tyrrell, Ferrari—cars from an era when danger was as much a part of the pursuit as talent. If you had a poster of a racecar on your wall growing up, chances are it was one of these.
These aren’t the clinically perfect machines of today. These are cigarette-and condom-liveried, high-revving relics of much more raw eras in time and technologies—H-pattern gearboxes, tires that defined the meaning of slicks, aluminum wings, punctuated by the unmistakable bark of a Cosworth DFV at full song. From 1966 to 1985, this was F1 at its most daring.
Laguna remembers them well.
It harks back to ground effects cars that clung to the track like they were welded to it, sucking themselves into the pavement, until they suddenly weren’t. It remembers the teams of “also rans” who strove to tackle the titans of the sport with wild and substance-fueled ideas that didn’t quite always work. And it remembers the men—the likes of Villeneuve, Hunt, Andretti—who wrestled, danced with, and coaxed these magnificent machines around the fastest and most memorable GP circuits the world had to offer.
Watching them now is like unlocking a vault sealed in adrenaline and castor oil. The curves of the bodies, the way that with just a flick of a wrist they darted down the Corkscrew with a healthy dose of power—it’s not just racing, it’s theater. And for a few laps, these fighters of a past era are alive again, springing forth from static black-and-white magazine photos to fully present in technicolor.
Then there’s Trans-Am—red, white, blue racing. Boss 302s. AMC Javelins. Fire-breathing Camaros and Mopars that served as the racing equivalent of a western saloon brawl. Laguna Seca bore witness to Penske blue and Sunoco yellow, thundering through the turns with Mark Donohue at the helm, calm as a surgeon while chaos clung to his mirrors. Laguna carries the echoes of bygone eras—the muscle, the grit, where top-flight racers from around the sporting world came together in power-heavy, fire-breathing production cars.
You can feel it walking the paddock: the smell of fuel mixed with sea air, the old liveries sun-faded and proud. Crews tighten bolts on cars older than many of the fans. Mechanics tend to systems in a religious manner. Fathers point to tailpipes and tell their sons, “I saw this one at Riverside, ’70, sliding through the esses.”
There are corners that remember the line of a driver long gone. Places where something happened—a spin, a pass, a failure so pure it became beautiful. Turn 6, where the compression used to snap suspensions. Turn 2, wide as a promise.
This isn’t about speed anymore. Not really. It’s about memory. Legacy. A place where machines now come not solely to win, but to testify their defiance to the laws of time.
From behind the lens, Laguna Seca is a photographer’s paradise. As long as you mind the light—sun at your back, eye to the flow—you can make magic at almost any corner. The elevation changes, and the variations of backgrounds make for an always engaging subject for the photographer worth his salt—it all conspires to make you see history beyond just capturing it.
I wake up early when I’m here without the need for an alarm clock. I make my coffee by the tent, feel the morning chill roll down the hills, and hope the thick Monterey marine layer buggers off. Then I walk the paddock with a quiet kind of purpose. Out of general camping, around the outside of Rainey Curve, over the bridge by the Corkscrew, and down the hill.
When I step onto the track edge, camera in hand, I’m not just a photographer—I’m a witness. These cars, these people, this place… it all swirls together in the frame. You catch a glimpse of a Chaparral lifting a wheel through Turn 4 and it’s 1967 again. You see the nose of a Z/28 dive into Turn 11, front tire clawing at the pavement, and for just a second, after I’ve gotten all my shots I take a moment to just sit and appreciate the history in front of me.
There are moments—rare ones—when it all aligns: the light, the car, the corner, the memory. Click. You don’t just capture speed. You capture memories.
And what’s strange, what’s beautiful, is that you’re not chasing the past. You’re moving with it. Living alongside it. The Rolex Reunion isn’t about reenactment. It’s not a museum on wheels. These cars are alive—moving, breathing, bleeding horsepower into the air.
I’ve raced here too—Formula Ford, light and nimble, no power to hide behind. And I do believe seeing the track as a driver supplies special aids to a photographer. It’s smooth, yes. It flows. But it’s never easy. There’s no stretch of asphalt long enough to catch your breath. Just enough time to glance at your gauges and tell myself, “don’t be such a wuss this lap.”
Turn 1 is blind—a hump over the hill that dares you to keep your foot flat on the gas pedal. You can’t see what’s next but you know the track is there. Then Turn 2 comes fast and hard—big braking zone, wide as a runway, but if you miss your mark, it’ll humble you quickly.
Turn 5 never quite feels right—camber shifts beneath you, like the track’s second-guessing itself mid-corner. It asks for trust, not technique.
And Turn 6? That’s where you have to be brave. Chuck it in. A “breathe and squeeze,” as master racer Jim Pace would always say in his onboard lap tours.
Then there’s the Corkscrew—famous, feared, and still a bit ridiculous. First time through, I puckered so hard I think I left an imprint on the seat. They always tell you to “look for the tree.” What they don’t say is… there’s a whole damn forest up there. Which tree? The green one? Thanks, pal. Brake in a straight line, turn left, turn right, and stay there.
But Rainey Curve—that’s where it all comes together. Fast, committed, honest. There’s no faking it there. You either give it what it asks, or it gives you a reason to try again. I missed my turn-in there once and never repeated that again.
And when you’re in rhythm—when every shift clicks, every apex greets you like an old friend—you realize: this track doesn’t fight you. It tests you. It offers itself fully, but only to those who offer something back. Whether it’s a camera or a car, Laguna doesn’t want tourists. It wants pilgrims dedicated to the love of vintage racing beauty.
I’ve seen this place from behind the lens and behind the helmet, through the quiet of a foggy morning and the nervous focus of a qualifying lap. And in both cases, the feeling is the same:
This event is an occasion to celebrate and remember.
A chance to steal time away from the day-to-day and remember with perfect detail the reasons why we love racing to begin with. Why we still tell the stories of those who came before us.
The sun slips behind the ridgeline slowly out here, as though it wants to linger. The paddock quiets. The last torque wrench clicks. A kid mechanic counts lug nuts like his life depends on it. Somewhere, someone lights a camp stove. The stories of the day’s conquests flow.
I pack up the camera and begin my trek away from the Paul Newman media center through the paddock, back up the inside of the Corkscrew, over the bridge, along the outside of Rainey Curve toward my tent, eager to look through the thousands of photos from the day.
Laguna doesn’t end when the cars go silent. It hums on—in the hills, in the photos, in the muscle memory of every driver who ever rolled into Turn 2 a little too hot (we’ve all done it at least once).
“Even now, long after the last car is loaded and the last campsite breaks down, the hills still echo. Not with noise—but with knowing. The track remembers.”
