On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Corvette’s introduction to the world in 1953, the faithful gathered once again under sunny Peninsula skies for the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca to honor “America’s Sports Car.” Of the 550 cars participating in this year’s event, nearly 50 were examples of competition Corvettes, and they were complemented by a well-conceived Heritage Display in the paddock that featured both race and road models of each generation of Corvette from the original C1 to the brand-new C7. Centerpiece of the display was a “cutaway” C7 that let observers see how the car is assembled, and a special treat for all was the public debut of the very first C7R racecar, which made a couple of quick, stealthy laps in a novel camouflage livery on Saturday afternoon.
Among the Corvettes on hand was one of the rarest of all, the fourth of five “Grand Sports” built by Chevrolet in 1963. Chassis 004, race-numbered 3, appeared at Laguna Seca thanks to the Revs Institute for Automotive Research in Naples, Florida. It carried instrumentation installed by students from the Institute’s Revs Program at nearby Stanford University that captured specific information on driver/car interactions in real-life situations. The car raced at both the Pre-Reunion and the Reunion, driven in the former by John Morton and the latter by Bruce Canepa.
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