Introduction
In a weekend filled with peaceful concours and auctions, the annual Monterey Historic Races form an active and loud alternative. Celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, the Laguna Seca track hosted the celebration of motor racing’s rich heritage for the 33rd year. In these three decades organizer Steve Earle has carefully crafted the event that today draws the finest of historic racers that would otherwise be stored away in private collections and museums. He has achieved this by emphasizing safety and banning aggressive drivers for at least a year. This serves as enough of a guarantee for owners of the rarest of vehicles to venture out to Laguna and it also prevents the insurance companies from asking for crazy amounts of money to insure the event. Although this might not appeal to the racing purists, it does offer a very rare opportunity for spectators to see these rare cars in action. And after all there are still plenty of events where driving on or over the edge is still possible. It’s also safe to say that once the flag drops, many drivers slip into their racing mode and put in a very good show. Another returning tradition is the celebration of a special theme. This year all eyes were on Cooper’s fabulous creations, ranging from the Formula 1 winning single seaters to the giant-slaying Mini Coopers.
With the experience from the last two years in the back of our heads, we decided to make plenty of space in our busy schedule to capture all the action on track. The result of this extra effort can be found in our carefully selected 230-shot slideshow, which shows all fourteen groups, the various demos and the lap-record breaking Toyota TF106.

Cooper and Brabham
John and Charles Cooper entered the racing world right after WWII with specials created in their own garage. Their motorcycle engined single seaters aimed at the Formula 3 class were very well received and not much later Cooper was a full-time racing car manufacturer. The quirky cars stood out because of their unusual sound and the location of the engine between the driver and the rear axle. When they stepped up the ladder to Formula 2, they produced a far more conventional front-engined racer. In 1952 Cooper was best of the rest in the World Championship behind the all-conquering Ferraris. On the other side of the world a young Jack Brabham was dominating racing in Australia in a variety of Coopers. To make the most of his career, Brabham moved to England in 1955 and immediately bought a new Cooper. John and Charles had returned to the mid-engined layout for the T39 Bobtail sportscar. Brabham urged the Coopers to build a single seater version of this successful sportscar, which became the unique T40; the first mid-engined Formula 1 car. Although it was not raced with much success, it taught both the Coopers and Brabham lessons that were incorporated in a series of mid-engined single seater racers that would forever change the sport. In 1958 Stirling Moss was the first to win an F1 race in a mid-engined car, and Jack Brabham took the World Championship in 1959 and 1960. The Coopers excelled in simplicity and were very popular with privateers in all single seater classes. In Formula 1 the other teams caught up and passed Cooper. Brabham left and started his own company, which just like Cooper concentrated on the construction of sportscar and single seater production. In 1966 he was the first driver to win a Formula 1 race in a car bearing his own name and a year later he was the first to win a World Championship in a car bearing his own name. Cooper had found a new market by offering performance upgrades for the popular Austin Mini. The Mini Coopers were successful in road races and rallies, with wins in the Rallye Monte Carlo as clear highlights.
Cooper and Sir Jack Brabham were celebrated at the Historics by a colourful mix of Coopers and Brabhams. In particular the race on Saturday afternoon for Formula 1 & 2 racers from 1955-1965 was a true Cooperfest. The group was appropriately headlined by Sir Jack’s 1960 Cooper T53 ‘Lowline’ F1-racer.

Lap Record
Two years ago Ferrari was the featured marque and their Formula 1 racing team traveled to Laguna Seca to not only demonstrate a current F1 car, but also to break the track’s lap record. They failed and by quite a margin too. This year Toyota took over as title sponsor and like Ferrari, sent their F1 team across the pond. Even though 2 cylinders and 600 cc down on the 2004 Ferrari, the Toyota team were confident that their driver Ricardo Zonta could take the lap record set by Helio Castroneves in the 2000 CART race. He managed to do so in his first attempt and continued to break his record throughout the weekend. After his last session, the record read 1m06.309; some 1.2 seconds faster than Castroneves’ old time. It's interesting to point out that the new lap record on the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca is now held by a Toyota. At a slighter lower pace, the Japanese company also demonstrated two 2000 GT racing cars and an IMSA Celica.
Longtime sponsor DaimlerChrysler also made their presence felt by sending out John Fitch in his ex-Mille Miglia 300 SL and four McLaren SLRs with Jay Leno leading the group.
Fifty lucky owners of the limited edition MINI Cooper Works GP took delivery of their new car at the track. To complete their reception experience, they were allowed on track for their very first drive in their performance-oriented MINIs, that feature a strutbrace instead of a rear bench among other modifications.

Track Action
Over the weekend hundreds of highly-varied racing cars took the track to qualify, warm-up and race in their respective groups. All painted in their original colours and livery, the cars ranged from primitive racers of the teens and twenties to the TransAm cars of the late seventies. Of those very early cars, a Delage grabbed our attention. The car’s bright blue chassis rails formed a nice contrast with the turned-aluminum bodypanels. We later found out it won 44 races and broke 37 records in its day and was aptly nicknamed ‘La Torpille’ or the Torpedo. In the next race, 1971 Le Mans winner Gijs van Lennep showed he's still got it by scoring his first win in decades with Ben Pon’s Porsche 550. Inspired by the Cooper-revolution the great front-engined sportscars were gradually phased out in the 1960s. One of the very last of these introduced was Maserati’s legendary Tipo 60/61 Birdcage. Particularly in the hands of Stirling Moss did it shine against strong Aston Martin and Ferrari competition back in the day. His 1960 Nurburgring-winning example was present and competed against a fine collection of Listers, Ferraris and Astons. Moss’ co-pilot for that race was Dan Gurney, who would later form his own team, which produced America’s first Formula 1 winner. Three of these V12 engined F1 cars were produced and Lou Sellyei Jr trusted Indy 500 winner Bobby Rahal to drive his example. He entertained the crowds with the glorious howl produced by the V12 engine.
These are just some of the highlights out on track; many, many more can be found in the slideshow.

Conclusion
Although Cooper is not quite as well known by the general public, a celebration of this highly influential marque was long overdue. Judging from the number of Coopers shipped from Europe to California the European owners felt the same and were more than happy to participate. The rest of the program was entertaining throughout with the race for the lap record as one of the highlights. Nothing beats seeing cars doing what they are built for; driving!