The "Earle" is OUT!

[khamai]

Monterey Historics News -

According to news reports Steve Earle who started and has organized the Monterey Historics for 36 years is OUT!

It's reported that Earle's General Racing and SCRAMP (folks that run Laguna) were unable to come to an agreement to continue the long relationship. Laguna/SCRAMP will have the rights to use the name "Monterey Historic Races" for 2010, but then will have to rename the event.

Laguna/SCRAMP intends to continue the tradition of a race for Historic cars on the same weekend as Pebble. Earle has said he will focus his attention on the Wine Country Classic at Sears (Infineon).

Cheers,
Kiyoshi

[LarryB]

Heard rumblings about this the last few months. It'll be interesting to see what SCRAMP does with it...

[khamai]

The positive side of this news is that assuming SCRAMP continues the tradition of a featured marque that MAYBE Lotus can become the designated marque one year.

It's a pretty well known fact that Earle has a dislike for Lotus. He relented once in the 36 years and Lotus was the designated marque in 1995. That year the factory and Classic Team Lotus brought cars in from Norwich and created a fantastic display of Lotus F1 cars. The GGLC hosted the West Coast Lotus Meet (we called it the Lotus Convention) and we did some pretty "historic" things -
> We gathered over 350 cars in our "Corral"
> We had a parade lap and our cars encompassed the entire 2.2 miles of Laguna 2 wide
> Clive Chapman drove a classic Elan for the first time EVER!
> That weekend between the Corral/Convention and the Lotus cars there were over 500 Lotus cars at Laguna
> We had over 700 Lotus enthusiasts at the Hilton hotel for a banquet
> We had a dinner/event at the Monterey Aquarium and had the entire place to ourselves. It was kinda strange to have a sushi/sashimi dinner in front of the tanks...

We can only hope that SCRAMP can maintain the high level for the "New" Historics.

Cheers,
Kiyoshi

[RichardL]

I spoke with several owners at the pre-historics and the general feeling was that the replacement guy (who has been very involved with the actual organization of the event over the years) will be much fairer and responsive to the historic racing community. Many of the petty annoyances and 'tweaking' of rules and results is expected to reduce. It was also calculated that Earle was rather like Bernie Ecclestone in that most of the profit went into his back pocket - as much as $2M for the weekend by one estimate. It is hoped that fees and re-investment will improve in the future

[GeoffW]

Originally Posted by RichardL

It was also calculated that Earle was rather like Bernie Ecclestone in that most of the profit went into his back pocket - as much as $2M for the weekend by one estimate.

Funny, my father and I were comparing him to Ecclestone this weekend as well.

We both kinda scoffed at his "lap of honor" on sunday.

[wallabyguy]

Kiyoshi,

At first glance of your title, I though Lotus had come up with a new model with a terrible new name.

[khamai]

Originally Posted by wallabyguy

At first glance of your title, I though Lotus had come up with a new model with a terrible new name.

LOL! I know enough to have put such a topic in the "Lotus Related" forum.

Let me chatter on a bit more about Earle. There are plenty of Steve Earle critics out there. I don't know what happened between SCRAMP and Steve that led to this "divorce", but while Mr Earle has never been a big supporter of Lotus and his love of Ferrari clearly shows, I don't think there's any enthusiast of vintage race cars that can fault what he singlehandedly did for the vintage racing scene in N America if not globally.

Prior to the Monterey Historics old race cars were tossed away and used up. In most cases left to rot in some field. It's pretty simple to point back to the first Historics 36 years ago and see that every vintage racing organization began after that. And with places to show off and play with old race cars people began to cherish them and values jumped.

It all goes back to Mr Earle calling up a few friends with old race cars and renting a track on Fort Ord near Monterey 36 years ago.

Cheers,
Kiyoshi

[mgreenbl]

Statement from Steve Earle of General Racing, Ltd. regarding the future of the Monterey Historic Automobile Races

In response to the press release issued by SCRAMP on August 16, 2009 regarding the future of the Monterey Historic Automobile Races® at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, Steve Earle, President of General Racing, Ltd., has issued the following statement:

General Racing, which has created and produced the Monterey Historic Automobile Races® for 36 years, will no longer be doing so. In the future SCRAMP, the Sports Car Racing Association of Monterey Peninsula, will organize a new event.

On September 5, 2008, I was advised that the economic terms for the agreement between General Racing and SCRAMP were no longer commercially viable for SCRAMP. I’m disappointed that we were not able to come to an agreement that would allow our event to remain in Monterey. General Racing will allow SCRAMP a one-time use of the name Monterey Historic Automobile Races® for the 2010 event.

General Racing will continue the tradition of the Monterey Historics at the Wine Country Classic at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif., in early June 2010.

We are very proud of all that we have accomplished with the Monterey Historic Automobile Races®, and I truly believe that we have brought something special to the community of Monterey as an event of world renown and the generator of substantial revenue for the local economy and the charities to which SCRAMP contributes.
The purpose of General Racing, Ltd., is and always has been to encourage the restoration, preservation and use of historic, sports and racing cars. General Racing events and races are for the enjoyment of participants and enthusiasts alike