What an absolutely crazy week! I'd been to Monterey car week when I was younger but this is the first time I've had to work it, and it was absolutely exhausting. Amazing, but exhausting. Sorry I didn't get to pics or pm's while I was out there but I didn't have much off time.

I flew out from Atlanta Wednesday and as soon as we arrived in the trailer paddock it got crazy. In preparing our Aston for the Tour d'Elegance, we picked up a flat tire. We had no spare and all of our tools were in the support trucks working over at Laguna Seca. Made use of what we had to get the wheel off and then a couple of the crew found a motorcycle repair shop that thankfully stayed late to help us out.



While they were off fixing the flat, Rob and I stayed behind to get some of the major detail work out of the way. The car had just returned from the Aston celebration at Windsor Castle in London and was pretty scratched up and dirty from the trip.







It was a bit difficult to concentrate on work with so much beauty around us being unloaded and cleaned up.

 

Thursday-Saturday were track support days for us. We kept the cars running and clean as well as the customers happy. With pre-war French cars, it is a hell of a job keeping them running. I honestly have no idea how the mechanics did it back in the day when they were really racing the cars and not just tooling around a track "racing".

In our pit we had 2 Talbot Lago T26 Grand Prix cars. The last one built and the third to last built. A 1936 Delahaye Type 135 CS Grand Prix car. This car won the 1938 24 hours of Le Mans and ran in the 1936 Grand Prix of Marseilles. And another Talbot Lago Grand Prix car that I don't know much about unfortunately.

 

One of the many highlights for me was getting behind the wheel of the Le Mans winning Delahaye.



Our pit was also very active with camera crews doing interviews throughout the week. Here is one of our customers from France being interviewed by a French tv personality.



The restoration shop I work for did Jay Leno's Bugatti, so naturally he stopped by and interviewed one of our customers for Jay Leno's Garage. Can't wait to see the episode.







Also had a friend there racing his F1 car so I got to spend some time in the vintage F1 pits.

 

The French guy in the interview above had two road cars for us to take care of during the week as well. A Delahaye and Talbo. The blue Delahaye was not happy at all during the week and required to much attention to keep running. One electrical problem after the other. The shop we work for DID NOT do the recent restoration on that one.







I had to cut Saturday short at the track to head back to the trailer with Rob to prep the Aston for an early Sunday am. We also had to take some of the modern devices off the car like the cooling fan, making getting the car to the green a bit sketchy.

 

4 am was EARLY! And we still weren't the first car in line, we were 8th. What really got me was the amount of people there that early just to see the cars roll on and take pictures. The Hagerty Dawn Patrol hats were gone and the line for coffee was long as hell.

Once rolled on Rob and I got down to business and did the final prep from the car driving down to the green. Lot's of grass blades in those tires. We got a lot of compliments and interviews while detailing the cars, look for us in Hagerty's Dawn Patrol video and in Microsofts video production.















Just like at Amelia, we were the first car judged in class. Pebble is a different ball game with the car being judged on presentation, restoration, and history. The restoration was completed on this Aston right before Amelia Island in March and it was invited to the Centennial Celebration at Kensington Palace where it was named one of the 100 greatest Aston's in 100 years. It has decent period race history with the high note being a running in the first British Grand Prix in 1926. The owner had a great presentation with lots of verified history and period photos of the car and we did a hell of a job detailing it. We were very optimistic of our chances.

 

There was always a crowd and the car drew some great acclaim from racers that stopped by to take a look. Alain de Cadenet did a great presentation on the components of the car for the crowd even though he had never seen this car before, his knowledge is astounding.





Unfortunately we did not place, we lost out to Nick Mason's 1934 Aston that took 3rd in Le Mans. A bit of bitterness but Nick really was a great guy to talk to and a real car nut.

Of all the cars in our class I really thought this DBR2 would be the biggest competition.

 

I was pretty tied down with work all week and weekend but did manage to sneak away from time to time. The following pics are some random's from the track, auctions, and concours.