Lime Rock Park

Lime Rock Park is a natural-terrain motorsport road racing venue located in Lime Rock, Connecticut, United States, a hamlet in the town of Salisbury, in the state's northwest corner. The track is owned by Skip Barber, a former race car driver who started the Skip Barber Racing School in 1975.

History

The 1.5-mile Lime Rock track was originally conceived of in 1956 by Jim Vaill, who, along with John Fitch and Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, built the track utilizing state-of-the-art road and highway safety principles of the time. The first race, a mix of G-Production class and an MG class, was held on April 28, 1957. The winner of the G-Production was Ted Sprigg in an Alfa Romeo Giulietta. The winner of the MG class was Charles "Skip" Callanan in an MG TC. In 1959, Limerock hosted the Little Le Mans race, won by Charles "Skip" Callanan and Roger Penske in a Fiat Abarth. In 2008, the track was re-paved and two new corner complexes were added.^[2]

The track has a loyal following,^[2] though it did face some resistance from the local community shortly after it opened. In 1959, the Lime Rock Protective Association, with support from the nearby Trinity Episcopal Church,^[3] took the park to Litchfield Superior Court in an effort to ban Sunday racing. The court issued a permanent injunction against Sunday racing, and its decision was upheld by the Connecticut Supreme Court. While restrictive, the carefully crafted injunction was also enabling. It preserved the track's right to conduct unmuffled sports car racing on Fridays and Saturdays, plus testing on Tuesdays and other operating benefits. The injunction stands to this day.^[4]

The track has featured many well-known racers including Paul Newman, who supported his own Newman-Haas team with Bob Sharp,^[5] Mario Andretti, Stirling Moss, Dan Gurney, Sam Posey, and Mark Donohue.^[2]

The Rolex Sports Car Series and American Le Mans Series used a configuration which included the chicane at turn five and West Bend.

Track

For years the track was listed as being 1.53 miles in length—the story goes that right after it was built, somebody used the odometer in a Chevy to measure the track length—and 1.53 was taken as gospel. Following the 2008 reconstruction (see below), Lime Rock's operations people measured all four possible configurations, and as it turns out, each was 1.5 miles long, plus or minus a few hundred feet. The "classic" configuration is 7 turns, while the three optional layouts are 8, 9 and 10 turns, respectively.

See also

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Litchfield County, Connecticut

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lime Rock Park.

• Lime Rock Park website
• Skip Barber Racing School (Uses Macromedia Flash)

Gallery

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  Lime Rock Park, Connecticut

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  Lime Rock Park, Connecticut

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  Lime Rock Park, Connecticut

Coordinates: 41°55′40″N 73°23′01″W / 41.927688°N 73.383599°W / 41.927688; -73.383599

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