I want to start off by thanking everyone who showed up for the ZONC Z Car Corral on Saturday.  It was a pleasure to see all of you!!

The weather was perfect early on Saturday and I was pleased to see that we had 8 cars a the shop ready to join us on our caravan down to Laguna Seca to meat up with the rest of the group.   Unfortunately the most of the drive to the track takes place on Highway 101 so there isn’t much room for spirited driving, we still managed to get to the track in under an hour and a half.

Once arriving it seems like the rest of the car clubs enjoy getting up much earlier than ours did because all of the other corrals from Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, and others were already nearly at capacity.  Porsche had the most cars by far, easily understandable because they were the featured marque this year.  When will it be Nissan/Datsun’s time!?!?  Are you gonna show up when it happens?  I sure am.

While the practice sessions were underway in the morning hours we walked the paddock area in search for automotive gold.  There are amazing cars at every turn at this event, and you don’t even need your sense of sight to appreciate them.   I can’t even count the times that our group stopped by a running car just to listen to the engine note and to smell the burning race fuel.

After lunch we settled into our seats just outside of turn four to enjoy the racing.  While we appreciate the older racing cars that were up for the first few races, we were simply patiently waiting for the last two races of the day which were the 1964-1971 FIA Mfg. Championship cars (mainly Porsche 917s) and the 1981 -1990 FIA Mfg. Championship cars and the IMSA GTP cars.

You can imagine that when seriously priceless cars are raced that the track time is little more than glorified pace laps,  NOT TRUE!!!!  The cars were wheel to wheel in every sense and there was certainly rubbin and bumpin going on.  The drivers wanted to win, after all when would all of these cars ever be on track again together?  It was truly a sight to behold.

I have found a video of the winner of the IMSA GTP race and it can be viewed after the “read more”.  The video is taken from inside the pilot’s driver’s helmet.  I want one of these cars.  There is also a gallery of the photos that I took on Saturday (the only day I attended unfortuantely.)  I will try to find photos from Sunday from someone who attended.  Hopefully we can get our group numbers a little bit higher next year to show how much support is out there for Nissan/Datsun products.  See you there.

(the photo below was of a really clean 240z that was just sitting by itself in the vendor’s area, we had to check it out.  haha)

Complete gallery and video after the ‘read more’

…[read more]

That’s right!!  Roughly three weeks from now on August 14-16th are the Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races at Laguna Seca.  The best part of this weekend is the Z Car Corral, hosted by the Z Owners of Northern California (ZONC), where all our fellow Nissan/Datsun friends get to park together right along the track in a VIP parking area.

ZONC is currently offering tickets for the Saturday the 15th Corral event on their website.  I know that the flyer below says that the deadline has passed to purchase tickets but trust me there are still plenty of spaces available.

Cars from every time period and every marque are represented during the Historics weekend but this year promises to be extra special because Porsche is the featured marque of this year’s event.  Porsche cars are already set to represent one third of the race cars on the track and Porsche factory will be bringing out a few rare cars as well.  The new four-door Panamera will also be on hand for the the public to view.

If you are busy this weekend cancel your plans.  The Historics are well worth it.  We would love to have you join Z Car Garage and ZONC for this amazing event!!!

Link:  ZONC Website

Link:  Official Rolex Monterey Historic Automobile Races

ZCarBlog:  ZONC Corral at the Rolex Historics 2008

This 350z track footage is courtesy of a friend of ZCG who was lucky enough to attend the track event at Laguna Seca on Monday.  This is pretty much a track only car and you can see from the video that it can keep up with a Porsche 993 twin-turbo.

I hope this will encourage some of you to get your Zs on the race track this summer.  The Z is a great platform to run on the track and requires very little preparation to have a reliable track experience.

If you are looking to get some seat time and would like to have Z Car Garage inspect your car or even perform a few upgrades before your next event please contact Rob at rob@zcargarage.com.

Thanks for the footage Scott and Alvin, you guys rock.  Z you on the flip side.

I wanted to get this post up again because reserved spots in the Z-car Corral are filling up quickly!  Getting the weekend pass for $65 is a deal by itself, and then you throw in great parking at the Z-car Corral and a parade lap around the full Laguna Seca circuit and you would be a fool not to attend!!

Z Car Garage will be bringing AT LEAST four cars from the shop and we have verified that other customers and friends have already signed up.  This is going to be an amazing race weekend with all your Z friends and we hope to see you there.  Visit the Z.O.N.C. Website to sign up TODAY!!!

The ALMS race is tomorrow and the Z Car Corral is going to be located right around turn 5.  We are going to be bringing out a few cars so stop by and say hello.  I will also be taking pictures of the entire weekend so expect to see them up here soon (as if I don’t have enough photos to edit already.)  Be safe and have fun!!