Marcos Maniacs

Hi Maniacs,

; I arrived back from Laguna Seca to a phone message from Steve Frey who already owns a 4 cylinder Volvo powered Marcos and a 6 cylinder Volvo powered Marcos. Steve has now acquired the 4 cylinder 1600 Marcos in Fairfield. In spite of the cars dismal condition, Steve plans on getting it back on the road, rather than using it for parts. This is good news since I hate to see a Marcos disappear.

Laguna Seca was fun. When I arrived at the track early Saturday morning it was really foggy. But even the fog did not hide the fact that there were some mean nasty serious race cars in the paddock. This event was not going to be as easy as the previous event at Thunderhill. There were not a lot of daily driver type cars. Some of the tires on these cars looked as wide as the entire Marcos. The sounds coming from the engine compartments were equally impressive. My first thoughts were that I was in over my head. The cars ranged from Vipers with race tires to vintage full race Mustangs and everything in between. Did I mention that this was the first time I had driven at Laguna Seca? To my dismay, the fog finally cleared around 9 a.m. and it was time to go "racing". This was actually a "Track day" which is not exactly the same as a Race. No trophies or prizes, no real grouping of cars by class, inline staggered starts, and passing only on the two straights. So the group I was in had a couple of Ferrari's, two Porsche 928's, a Porsche 944 turbo, a couple of Vintage Mustangs, a Z 28 or two, a Porsche 911T, a Porsche Carrera and a mixture of other cars to make the group of about 30 cars. Needless to say, the field looked interesting. As we were waved on to the track I started concentrating on the task at hand and everything went well. Laguna Seca is a lot of fun to drive. The famous "corkscrew" is not, in my opinion, nearly as bad as turn 5/5A at Thunderhill. All the groups ran three times during the day with the sessions lasting 20 minutes, 25 minutes, and 30 minutes. I was only passed once during the day. In each session I would typically pass around 6 other cars. I passed the two Ferraris, the various Porsches, the couple of Mustangs etc. The Porsche Carrera and I had a good time. I was marginally quicker but running in traffic we were pretty close. I had a great time. I even acquired my own cheering section... a sort of little car against all the big cars type thing. After ever session I would have more people come over to look at the car and ask questions. My favorite was a man that I had passed in a Porsche 928. He said, "It must really piss off all those guys in the big cars when you pass them!" So I had fun and will do it again soon.

Mike Denman

Chassis# 4079