Sonoma Historic Motorsports Festival 2015

Sonoma Historic Motorsports Festival 2015

Historic and vintage car racing

Starts: 05/29/2015

Ends: 2015-05-31

Sonoma Raceway

Sonoma, California

USA

Images© and story© provided by Frank Cunningham Contact Photographer For Information on Photos of this Event

The Sonoma Historic Motor Festival is many things and 2015 is an evolution of dedicated people's hard work.

First of all a bit of history. In the beginning, old race cars were just that; Old cars that had no value and set around rusting away. Oh How Have Things changed !!

AllCarCentral.com first coverage of this Sonoma race event was in 2008 and its name was "The 22nd annual Wine Country Classic Historic Car Races". This was, as noted, the 22nd year of the founder Steve Earle's vintage car racing show coming to the Sonoma race track. Steve Earle was the main driving force of the now very famous Monterey Historic races a few miles south. Steve and General Racing was now running both the Monterey and Sonoma races.

The 2008 Sonoma race weekend run now by Steve Earle/General Racing and Infineon Raceway, had a Wine and food celebration in the paddock and old race cars all over the place with race cars going north to a party in the lovely town of Sonoma

In 2009 General Racing and SCRAMP, the organization which manages Laguna Seca, could not come to terms on issues and General Racing left Monterey and the Vintage Race Car weekend that grew to be known around the world.

In 2010 the Weekend became the "Sonoma Historic Motor Festival", again under the care and management of General Racing's Steve Earle and Infineon Raceway. The weekend was to place 375 cars, soon to grow to 400, on track and car club displays around the track area with the Wine Party happening at the track and in the town of Sonoma.

in between 2012 and 2013, Infineon, the semiconductor and system solutions company, did not renew their contract with the, now, Sonoma Raceway causing, I am certain, much financial restructuring. After 2013 the now Sonoma Raceway, withdrew their management involvement from the Sonoma Historic Motor Festival leaving the 2014 weekend to General Racing and Steve Earle.

Dodge Daytona 1969

Sonoma Historic Motor Festival 2015.

In comes SVRA (Sportscar Vintage Racing Association) taking up the Sonoma Historic Motor Festival's banner and waving it high calling the vintage and historic cars to the track for the 2015 Sonoma weekend. SVRA has taken up the challenge laid down so many years ago by the group that called themselves General Racing to keep the vintage and historic race cars on the track and in front of the people for all to enjoy.

As racers are always looking for the edge for speed on the track, even if it is 2015 and the car is a 1915 "Special", SVRA has created a program called "The Gold Medallion Car Certification Program", designed to preserve the historic racecars in their period racing form.

Old race cars have gone from being lost to the weeds, or buried in a hay barns to being multi-million-dollar bid-after shiny-motorized-examples of mans worshiping-of-speed.

This current fascination of the old racecar can be directly credited to the many dedicated people's efforts and of the vintage and historic car events held every year around the world. For the spectators it is automotive history racing past, from the earliest to the present. For the drivers it is living the art.