Hi guys,
It's taken me a week to recover from the Monterey Madness, but I can finally post photos of the three genuine GT40s that were campaigning on the track.
I was privileged enough to get media passes, which gave me unlimited access to areas of the track normally out of bounds to spectators--I was literally standing with my toes on the edge of the dirt alongside the track, on the action side of the concrete barriers. My camera equipment is certainly not up to the job, as I'm using a Nikon Coolpix 950 which is about seven years old. But although I got lots of terrible photos, I did get some pretty good ones as well.
Here's some photos of the first car, P/1042. It was campaigned at Le Mans in 1967, oddly entered by two teams--Scuderia Filipenetti and Scuderia Brescia Corse. It appeared at Monterey wearing its Le Mans colors and markings. The first two are taken during the morning practice on the short straight between turns 3 and 4:
This was taken in the braking zone approaching Turn 5:
And these were taken late on Sunday afternoon, as everybody was packing the cars up and getting ready to ship them home:
I was at Sears Point last year when this car was rather heavily crashed into the barrier, tearing the nose to shreds. I looked as closely as I could, and could find no evidence of any damage; clearly the guys at Intrepid Motor Sports in Reno did a great job fixing it!
The next car was P/1049, which is a historically significant car because it belonged to Grady Davis, who was a big honcho at Gulf Oil. He originally bought it as a road car, but it was fitted from new with a race engine etc., and in 1967 it actually finished 6th at Daytona. The car was equipped with some unique equipment including a pair of identification lights on the roof, yet it retained most of its street car features (interior etc.)
Here is P/1049 during a quiet moment in the paddock. Note the two raised dimples in the nose; period photos show those were present when the car was new.
Note the oddly modified exterior door handle, which presumably would make ingress easier during Le Mans-type starts; also note that it still has the street car external door lock:
And peering through the rear, it's possible to see the FIA-mandated luggage rack perched over the exhaust system:
It's fabricated very simply from angle iron (or rather, angle aluminum). Brackets are bolted or welded to the chassis in various locations and the aluminum frame is held to them using Dzus fasteners.
Finally, P/1083 was running hard as well. This car was sold from new to Brazil, where it eventually passed to the Fittapaldi family and was raced by them with some success; it was also used as a road car for awhile.
It was great getting the opportunity to see these three cars running strong. Although they were outclassed by more modern machinery, they all ran well mid-pack and acquitted themselves quite well against the contemporary machinery in the class.
Next stop--Coronado in October!