Legends of Motorsports series aims to recapture the magic of racing's past

Vintage cars add interest to racing, such as the 2010 Pacific Northwest Historics. (Cleve Collinsworth / SOVREN)

Vintage cars will race at the Pacific Northwest Historics July 1-3 at Pacific Raceways. Vintage cars add interest to racing, such as the 2010 Pacific Northwest Historics. (Cleve Collinsworth / SOVREN)

Bobby Rahal longs to be back in the day when races were shrouded in mystery before the drivers started their engines, and every car had a distinctive roar.

"Racing has really become homogenized, and I think it loses something," says Rahal, 58, a three-time Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) champion and winner of the 1986 Indy 500. "Regulations have become so restrictive that everything is just cookie-cutter. Everything looks the same, everything sounds the same. There's no variation, no variety, no nothing. It's just all the same."

Now that NASCAR has given fans a sense of its rich history with the opening of a Hall of Fame in Charlotte, N.C., Rahal and partners Peter Stoneberg and Zak Brown hope to boost interest in auto racing's past even more through Legends of Motorsports, a vintage racing series that started last year.

The second season begins May 20 at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Ala.

Bobby Rahal (Don Gillespie)

"I think the platform is beautiful -- it's a mobile museum," says Michael Printup, president of Watkins Glen International. The raceway in New York hosted a Legends of Motorsports event during its inaugural season.

"Our business plan is sort of iconic cars, iconic tracks, iconic drivers," Rahal says. "If we weave those things together, we'll get what we want. We'll get the kinds of races and entries that are interesting and exciting."

Marc Giroux, an executive at nearby Corning Inc., is among the hopeful.

"Vintage racing tends to be more about the cars than the people. I think it's something that can catch on," says Giroux. "There are a lot of people who are into the old cars. It's kind of a gas for us to drive the cars that we watched our heroes drive."

Vintage racing has been around for decades, and often is staged at storied venues. In alternating years, Monaco hosts a historic race through the streets of Monte Carlo before its famed Formula One race. The Goodwood Festival of Speed in Britain had more than 130,000 people attend in 2009.

"When you come to a historic race, you see grandfathers taking their sons and their grandsons or granddaughters and talking to them about these cars. It becomes like a living museum in a lot of ways," Rahal says. "And because you have such access to the cars, it's pretty neat -- kind of like revisiting an old friend."

Steve Earle founded the Monterey Historic Automobile Races in 1974 (now named Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion), which has become the signature vintage event in the U.S. He understands the significance of not forgetting the past.

"Heritage and history are important in every business," Earle says. "Somewhere, we've overlooked a generation or two, and they need to be brought into the fold. They'll begin to identify, and suddenly NASCAR has a little more interest and IndyCar racing has a little more interest.

"And besides, everybody has a car story. You're really reaching into everybody's level."