Monterey County opens up management options for Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in 2017

Management at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca is up in the air for 2017. This comes as the county gears up to open a competitive process for the job. On Tuesday, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors took new action to request proposals for potential management at the raceway.

Supervisors said the idea is to find an operator for the 2017 racing season and a timeline to move in that direction over the next six to nine months was approved.

In the meantime, local non-profit SCRAMP, or Sports Car Racing Association of the Monterey Peninsula, will continue to operate the raceway. SCRAMP said it will work on a month-to-month basis through next year, until the county decides to seal the deal on a one-year contract for 2016. Several supervisors said they support an expedited one-year contract with SCRAMP for 2016 and that a contract is already in the works.

County leaders said SCRAMP has continued to maintain management at Laguna Seca without a competitive process since 2001. The County Administrative Office is getting involved to make sure the process is open and transparent. Changing that process is something SCRAMP supports.

“This is a very convoluted business. The business agreement that we’ve operating under the last 30 years is broken, it’s old, it needs to be refreshed and renewed, and this process now will allow that to happen. So I applaud that,” Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca CEO Gill Campbell said.

SCRAMP started running the raceway on a month to month basis in 2014 after county officials said maintenance wasn’t up to par and it fell behind on payments.

On Tuesday, SCRAMP said it’s current on all of its payments to Monterey County. The non-profit said it’s also current on a $400,000 bank loan and a $1.8 long-term note to DORNA, the sanctioning body for MotoGP and the Superbike World Championship. However, SCRAMP and the county say they’re still trying to figure out the cost of late fees and penalties.

“The parks director stated that we owe $500,000,” Campbell said. “We have justifications for a lot of that. There’s $140,000 in late fees and penalties when we ran behind with our payments to the county. We totally agree with that, we’ve got some work to do with our parks director on the remainder.”

SCRAMP has been running the track since 1957. In August, Monterey County Supervisor Dave Potter called SCRAMP a “good group of people working very hard,” but said they were in serious debt.

Earlier this year, the county had been in talks with the International Speedway Corporation for possible management of the raceway. A community petition circled against the move and the corporation ended up pulling out.