HOW TO ENJOY RIDING AND NOT DYING AT LAGUNA SECA
Twenty years of indifference to motorsports ended on July 20, 2008.
By accident, I watched the U.S. Grand Prix at Laguna Seca on a projector at the long-gone Lovejoy’s Bar in Austin, Texas. Rossi passed Stoner in the dirt on the last lap, accompanied by drunken Texan whooping and hollering. Lone Star beer fogged my visor on the way home and made me dip knees at every corner. Stupid, I know.
Growing up in the cable TV landscape of the 1980s, Laguna Seca was a regular on ESPN. IMSA, CART and even SCCA races played out over yellow scrub and blue sky dropping into grey snaking corkscrew pavement. Laguna etched itself in my brain, along with Watkins Glen, Road America and countless other tracks.
From the start
It took 60 days to build Laguna, or 3 months from when the ink dried on the lease. Carved from the eastern edge of the Fort Ord Army base, Laguna Seca cost about $3,000 to lease and about $125,000 to build. They hurried for a reason. Laguna’s predecessor, the Pebble Beach Road races, were a major draw, socially and economically. But they ended when Ernie McAfee crashed and died in
