This year marks the inaugural running of the Sonoma Speed Festival. While it is a brand new event, I am stunned at both the level of preparation of the event, and the high quality of racing cars that have been hauled to wine country for a good bit of vintage motorsport. And the best part is, you can watch it all live all day Saturday and Sunday on YouTube.
You can see the full event schedule right here, and check out the full entry list of racers right here. Everything from Maserati Birdcages and Ferrari GTOs (SO MANY GTOs!) to modern LMPs and Lewis Hamilton’s 2016 F1 car are here. It’s going to be a good weekend to watch.
With over 200 vintage racing cars split among ten racing classes, as well as exhibition laps from significant race cars and modern hypercars, plus lap record attempts by the Mercedes-AMG F1 team and nostalgia drag racing, there is something to watch literally all day long. I love vintage racing, especially as a spectator, because I get to see famous race cars from the days before I was born.
I am on-site here this weekend at Sonoma Speed Festival, as I’m co-hosting a mini-Radwood display in the paddock, so swing by and say hello. As soon as I drove in to the paddock on Thursday, it was clear that the crew behind this event put in a lot of effort. Something as simple as having uniform white tents over every participating car in the paddock makes a huge visual difference.
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The vintage racing scene in NorCal is a seriously competitive one. Not too far away from Sonoma is Laguna Seca, which runs the Monterey Historics every year, one of the largest and most prominent vintage events on the calendar. While the two events aren’t exactly competing directly against each other, it’s obvious that Sonoma Speed Festival is serious about making a stamp on the motorsport world.
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