Zak Brown arrived at the 2026 Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion with four very different cars to drive: a Jaguar XJR-9, an IROC Chevrolet Camaro, a championship-winning Penske Reynard-Honda and a McLaren M8D.
The Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion does not preserve racing history by asking it to remain still.
Its paddock is filled with machines carrying the marks of different championships, engineering philosophies and generations of competition. Yet the event’s defining quality is found beyond their appearance. These cars are prepared, started and driven with purpose, returning to a circuit where their sound, speed and physical presence can be understood in a way no static display could ever reproduce.
Among the drivers contributing to that experience was Zak Brown, whose collection brought an extraordinary range of motorsport history to WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
Across the Reunion, Brown drove four cars representing dramatically different interpretations of competition: a Jaguar XJR-9 shaped by international endurance racing, a 1977 IROC Chevrolet Camaro built around equal machinery, Gil de Ferran’s 2001 Team Penske Reynard 01i-Honda and a 1970 McLaren M8D/3 from the unrestricted world of Can-Am.
Each car was created to answer a different question.
How do you survive and win the longest races in the world?
What happens when champions from different disciplines are placed in equal cars?
How does an open-wheel machine become a championship winner?
And what is possible when engineers are given extraordinary freedom to pursue speed?
At Monterey, the answers could be heard, seen and felt on the same circuit.
The Jaguar and a Restored Le Mans Legacy
Few racing liveries carry the immediate recognition of Silk Cut Jaguar.
The white, purple and gold colors of the Jaguar XJR-9 remain inseparable from one of the most important periods in the manufacturer’s endurance racing history. Beneath its unmistakable bodywork sits a naturally aspirated V12, an engine whose scale, character and sound belong to a markedly different era of prototype competition.
Developed through Jaguar’s partnership with Tom Walkinshaw Racing, the XJR-9 represented a focused attempt to return the British manufacturer to the highest level of international sports car racing. It combined aerodynamic efficiency, endurance and the unmistakable force of Jaguar’s V12 architecture in a car built to withstand the longest and most demanding races in the world.
The XJR-9’s place in history was secured in 1988.
Jaguar won the 24 Hours of Le Mans that year, returning the manufacturer to the top step of the race for the first time since 1957. Across the season, the XJR-9 also helped Jaguar claim the World Sportscar Championship, while Martin Brundle secured the drivers’ title.
Those achievements gave the car significance beyond a single victory. The XJR-9 became the machine that reconnected Jaguar’s modern racing program with a Le Mans heritage established by the C-Type and D-Type decades earlier.
At Laguna Seca, its proportions reveal the priorities of Group C design. The enclosed rear wheels, long tail and low cockpit were shaped for efficiency at sustained speed. Yet Monterey presents a very different challenge from the long straights of Le Mans. Its elevation changes, compressed braking zones and steep descent through the Corkscrew place the car’s size and momentum into sharper focus.
The Jaguar does not appear delicate at speed. It carries its history with weight, both visually and mechanically, while the V12 gives spectators something increasingly rare in modern racing: an engine note that arrives before the car and remains after it has passed.
IROC and the Pursuit of Equal Competition
If the Jaguar represents engineering developed to conquer endurance racing, the 1977 IROC Chevrolet Camaro was created around an entirely different idea.
The International Race of Champions sought to remove as many mechanical variables as possible. Champions from different disciplines were placed in identically prepared cars, leaving adaptability, judgment and racecraft to settle the contest.
For drivers accustomed to machinery developed around a particular championship, IROC demanded compromise. Stock car racers, Formula One drivers, Indy car competitors and sports car specialists were asked to adjust to the same equipment, often on unfamiliar circuits and against opponents whose careers had been built in entirely different forms of racing.
The concept made the cars more than a supporting element. Their uniform preparation was central to the championship’s identity. Every driver faced the same fundamental strengths, limitations and demands.
Brown’s yellow 1977 Chevrolet Camaro carries the No. 15 and Cale Yarborough’s name, connecting it to one of NASCAR’s defining figures. Its appearance is unmistakably rooted in American racing, with broad bodywork, a long hood and a stance that could hardly be more different from the low, enclosed shape of the Jaguar.
The Camaro communicates its purpose without requiring explanation. It is wide, direct and visually uncomplicated, carrying the character of a championship built around close competition rather than technological variety.
At the Reunion, the Camaro competed as part of the returning IROC Presented by Chevrolet, in the Unser Family Cup. The gathering revived the spirit of a series that brought champions from NASCAR, INDYCAR, sports cars and other disciplines together in machinery designed to place them on equal terms.
For Brown, driving the Camaro creates a connection between collecting and participation. It is not simply preserved as an artifact associated with Yarborough and IROC. It remains a functioning race car, still expected to brake, turn and compete on one of North America’s most technically demanding circuits.
That continued use matters. Historic racing offers no guarantee that an important car will be easy to drive. The Camaro’s weight, power delivery and braking behavior belong to its period. Preserving the experience means accepting those characteristics rather than disguising them.
Gil de Ferran’s Championship-Winning Reynard-Honda
The 2001 Team Penske Reynard 01i-Honda carried a different kind of significance when it returned to the circuit at Monterey.
This was the car associated with Gil de Ferran’s second consecutive CART championship, secured during a defining period in his career with Team Penske. Its return was not simply another appearance by a significant racing car. It was a deeply personal tribute to a driver whose intelligence, precision and humanity left an enduring impression on the sport.
Brown purchased the Reynard from Roger Penske in 2026. With assistance from Honda Racing Corporation USA, the car was carefully returned to running condition. HRC supplied a period-correct Honda engine, supported the initial fire-up and inspected essential electronic components before the car returned to the track.
Brown’s connection to de Ferran made the moment especially meaningful. The two shared a close friendship, while de Ferran also held an important leadership role within McLaren Racing during his later career.
The Reynard itself reflects an era when American open-wheel racing combined extraordinary speed with considerable technical variety. Its compact bodywork, exposed wheels and low seating position leave little separation between the driver and the forces acting upon the car.
De Ferran won consecutive CART championships in 2000 and 2001 with Team Penske and Honda power. He also set the fastest official closed-course qualifying lap in American racing history at California Speedway, recording an average speed of 241.428 mph. More than two decades later, that record still stands.
At Laguna Seca, the Reynard was not entered into the weekend as another conventional historic racing competitor. Its demonstration laps carried a different purpose.
The car had been awakened after approximately 25 years, allowing its Honda engine to run again and giving those gathered around the circuit an opportunity to experience a machine connected to one of open-wheel racing’s most respected champions.
Watching Brown drive it added another layer of emotion. It joined mechanical history with personal remembrance, transforming the demonstration into something greater than the return of a championship-winning car.
It became a tribute expressed through movement.
The engine ran. The car returned to the circuit. For those laps, a piece of Gil de Ferran’s racing story was alive again.
The Unrestricted Force of the McLaren M8D
The 1970 McLaren M8D/3 belongs to one of the most dramatic and unrestricted periods in motorsport history.
Can-Am was a championship shaped by extraordinary engineering freedom. Its cars were immensely powerful, visually aggressive and created during a period when the pursuit of performance regularly pushed beyond established conventions.
The M8D is a direct expression of that philosophy.
Its low nose, enormous rear bodywork and distinctive fins were shaped by function. Behind the driver sits a large-displacement Chevrolet V8, delivering the kind of power that made Can-Am cars among the most formidable racing machines of their generation.
Brown’s M8D/3 carries a direct connection to Dan Gurney, who raced the car during the 1970 Can-Am season. Gurney was brought into the McLaren team following the death of Bruce McLaren and immediately delivered victories at Mosport and Mont-Tremblant.
The wider story of the M8D is inseparable from both loss and determination. Bruce McLaren died while testing the new model at Goodwood shortly before the beginning of the 1970 season. The team continued in his absence, winning nine of the championship’s ten rounds, while Denny Hulme secured the Can-Am title.
That history gives the car an emotional weight extending far beyond its speed.
At Laguna Seca, however, the M8D does not need its achievements explained before making an impression. Its proportions, noise and physical presence communicate the nature of Can-Am immediately.
There is very little about it that feels restrained.
The Chevrolet V8 changes the atmosphere around it. Its sound is deeper and more physical than the sharper note of the Reynard or the layered mechanical character of the Jaguar. The car feels as though it occupies more space than its bodywork alone could explain.
Driving it around Laguna Seca requires commitment. The circuit’s elevation changes and blind approaches demand precision from any car, but the M8D adds enormous power, period braking performance and a constant awareness of how quickly the rear of the car can become involved in the conversation.
Brown placed the McLaren on pole during the weekend and finished fourth in its first race following its rebuild.
The result demonstrated that the M8D had not returned merely to circulate. It had been prepared to compete again, preserving the intensity that defined it rather than reducing it to a carefully protected display.
Four Eras, Four Interpretations of Speed
Brown’s position within contemporary motorsport is well documented, but these four cars reveal another side of his relationship with the sport.
His collection is not confined to one manufacturer, championship or country. Instead, it follows the people, designs and moments that shaped different forms of racing. These cars are connected not by appearance, but by significance.
Each represents a clear competitive idea.
The Jaguar was built to return a manufacturer to endurance racing’s highest level, combining speed, efficiency and resilience in pursuit of victories measured across hours rather than minutes.
The Camaro was prepared to place champions on equal terms, stripping away some of the advantages of specialized machinery and asking drivers to prove how quickly they could understand and master the same car.
The Reynard-Honda represents the precision and extraordinary speed of championship-level American open-wheel racing, while its return also preserved the memory of Gil de Ferran through the car he drove to a title.
The McLaren represents a time when Can-Am engineering pursued performance with remarkable freedom, producing machines whose power and physical intensity remain difficult to comprehend until they are experienced in motion.
Bringing them to Monterey allowed those ideas to become visible again. Their differences could be heard in the paddock, observed in the braking zones and understood through the way each car moved across the same piece of asphalt.
That is where the Reunion carries its greatest value.
Historic racing is often described through rarity, provenance and financial value. Those elements matter, but they do not fully explain why these machines continue to command such attention. Their deeper importance lies in the work they preserve: the decisions of engineers, the judgment of drivers, the discipline of crews and the ambitions of the programs that built them.
At WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, these cars did not arrive as isolated objects from a finished past.
They arrived prepared to run.
Across several unforgettable days in Monterey, four very different chapters of racing history were once again measured in heat, sound, movement and time.
Article by Chloe Hedley
Photography by James Hedley, Speed & Spirit Media.
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