One of the United States' biggest motorsports festivals, celebrating legendary racing machines and historic cars, the Monterey Historic Reunion got underway on August 15th.

Starting on August 15th, the gathering at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, located near the resort town of Monterey in California, saw some 550 machines from the Historic Race Race Club of America taking part. Categories include prototypes and endurance racers such as IMSA machines, historic F1 cars from various eras, GT cars, and clubman formula machines, among others. Owners who have gathered from all over the country - and some from further afield, can be seen lovingly polishing the cars that are their pride and joy, while others busily conduct maintenance prior to running full throttle on the 2.228-mile (3.602km) track. Mazda North America owns the naming rights to this circuit, and uses this event for branding and PR exercises every year. Also, they've brought along some of the marque's most famous and most successful cars, including the Mazda RX-792P, Mazda RX-7 GTO, Mazda 787, and, sent specially from Hiroshima, the sprint spec Mazda 787B, for a simulated 1980s prototype car race.

In terms of drivers of the 787B, none other than Japan's Yojiro Terada is on hand. From the management side of Mazda, MNAO (Mazda North America Operations) Vice President Robert Davis, Managing Director Jeremy Burns and Sales Director Wheldon Manzei are also present.

A 20-minute practice session was held in order to check that all machines were functioning properly, with the RX-792 P running considerably quicker than the others, followed by the Mazda 787B, which also demonstrated a very quick pace. The 787B in which Terada drove, which had been brought over specially from Japan, was geared correctly for this track, but suffered from less-than-optimal brake and suspension settings, keeping the mechanics busy. Terada later commented, “Although this was a mock race, not being able to run as expected is rude to the audience, though we tried to adjust as much on the car as possible. In any case, I'm very happy to see so many people out enjoying the fantastic sound of the Mazda 787B.”