The Sound and the Fury

A legal feud over booming decibels put California's most historic roadracing circuit in jeopardy.

- LAWRENCE ULRICH

"CANNERY ROW in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream." 

So begins John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, one of fiction's best running starts. Here on Highway 68, it's grating noise at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca-with the stink of gasoline, as opposed to Monterey's sardines of yore-that put a nostalgic dream track in legal crosshairs.

The Monterey County-owned circuit was built on a portion of what was until 1994 the U.S. Army's Fort Ord, where infantry soldiers trained with rifles and artillery from World War I through the Gulf War. Now the track is defending itself against volleys from critics, who are responding to the booming exhaust notes of Indy cars and Rolex Reunion historic racers. Residents in the Highway 68 Coalition claim the rip-roaring has expanded beyond permitted bounds. Their lawsuit stalled a county approved management lease agreement with Friends of Laguna Seca (FLS) that could run as long as 55 years. This was, of course, frustrating to FLS leaders, including longtime racer and restoration titan Bruce Canepa.

The FLS nonprofit has envisioned a big-money makeover to rebuild Laguna Seca as "the world-class facility it needs to be," Canepa says. County Supervisor Mary Adams calls the circuit a "tarnished jewel" that, nonetheless, generated about $290 million in area economic activity in 2023.