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Laguna-Seca under new management

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Bill Pemberton

0ld Ford Automotive Racing Terror
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This will be something racers and race fans will watch with concern over the next few years. Quite surprising to see business issues with what most of us considered one of the most important and legendary tracks, not in just California , but the entire North American continent!
 
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captdistraction

GrumpyRacer
1,954
1,698
Phoenix, Az
More info on the new manager: https://racer.com/2019/11/19/insight-monterey-county-sham/

Pretty awful stuff. So a hotel executive who had a son die at the track is now in control at the county's blessing? (not making light of his loss, sounds terrible)

Rev up the bulldozers, that track is done. Hopefully the eventual starbucks location keeps some track-shaped souvenir mugs. If there's an event in 2020 that I can make sound for, I'm definitely going to give it a shot, even if that means the GT350 has to roll up its sleeves.
 
This looks worse than I originally thought and this smells pretty fishy. As a former and current Form 700 filer, AKA FPPC forms, I have some perspective on this. The FPPC can conduct "witch hunts" and I was involved in one. Just because they are investigating someone does not mean they are guilty. Aside from that though it would seem the county is not following the typical open bidding process that the state of CA has in place and that most CA municipalities follow. I fully expect a lawsuit to be filed by LSM and SCRAMP immediately. The county must follow their policies and procedures and if they don't the contract with A&D will be voided. You may recall something similar happened in Utah. A lawsuit was filed so a temporary contract was put in place and eventually Geely made the purchase as was planned all along.

https://www.utahmotorsportscampus.com/more/news-info/95-geely-purchases-utah-motorsports-campus.html
 
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...The FPPC can conduct "witch hunts"...
In Canada we prefer the term "fact-finding".

The Racer.com article makes the situation sound pretty bad, at least optically. There's rarely a good outcome when someone who doesn't know anything about a business steps in to run it.
 

carver

breaker of wrenches
445
598
ontario
This iconic track has way to much history to go under. It will probably go through some pains but ultimately will survive. Some deep pockets will step in.

Our beloved Mosport struggled for years but now it's really come around as Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
(CTMP)
 
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Any track can go under, Daytona was set to go under with the Volusia tax rules back in the 80s, seems Bill France had a handshake deal with the city that they wouldn't hit him up for property tax, if he dredged up enough money to build the track..No contract, no deal, Volusia was going to give him a tax bill and he said he would shut the track down. It took state legislation to save it. ANY track can go under with an incompetent government.
SCRAMP has been a great caretaker of that track using minimal revenue, this is pure political pay back and cronyism from The People's Republik of Kalifornia,.
look at the disasters coming from Sacramento RIGHT NOW!!, they have half the state burning up while the rest runs out of electricity, they could be swimming in hydro electric power but instead let it pour into the ocean, the government in Sacramento is dysfunctional, doesn't follow their own laws, and can't enforce what laws they do pass.
Their high speed rail is just another example of their ineptitude. Do you really think an old race track that sees less than 200K people per year is even on their radar?
 
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Bill Pemberton

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Scary to think about Blacksheep's comments , but he is so right about the situation that was front page racer news concerning Daytona and its future years ago.
 

Ludachris

Chris
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From what I understand it has very little, if anything to do with the state government, and everything to do with the county, since the county owns the track. Everyone here in NorCal is wondering which of those county officials have ties to developers and other boards, who would love to see the track go away in order to profit from the land in other ways. Sure, the environmentalists would love the track to close, but the bigger threat is almost certainly the developers and investors lobbying hard to cash in on some huge profits. Same thing is happening to the drag strip in Sacramento.

We've all got our fingers crossed, but it doesn't look good right now.
 
This is all disheartening. I am hoping for the best but not getting warm fuzzy feelings as all this is concerned.

I am taking delivery of my 2020 GT500 in the spring and also will be sure to hit some of the high DB days in 2020 as I doubt the car will make sound for one of their regular days.

In addition to the days mentioned NorCal SAAC has secured 103DB for their "black Friday" track day next year. Usually a very good day!
 
This is all disheartening. I am hoping for the best but not getting warm fuzzy feelings as all this is concerned.

I am taking delivery of my 2020 GT500 in the spring and also will be sure to hit some of the high DB days in 2020 as I doubt the car will make sound for one of their regular days.

In addition to the days mentioned NorCal SAAC has secured 103DB for their "black Friday" track day next year. Usually a very good day!

Yeah Norcal Shelby has had that day after Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember..... rumor has it that it will be 105 db in 2020.
 

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