About Lime Rock Park

I grew up not too far from Lime Rock Park. The first time that I went to the track was to watch the vintage racing on Labor Day weekend with my mom. We sat on the hill on the outside of the track overlooking the front straight, Big Bend and the Left Hander leading to No Name Straight (now Paul Newman Straight). I’ve lost count of the times that I’ve been back to the vintage race weekend. I’ve been there when the 70th anniversary of the Corvette was celebrated. At that edition I got to see all the one-off development specials that Chevy built from the CERV to Mako Shark as well as the Vettes that ran at Sebring and Le Mans. Just wild – it was like meeting your comic book heroes. Speaking of heroes, I met John Fitch one year and I was there when Stirling Moss was honored. Later when I ran my first SCCA race at Lime Rock, it was one of Newman’s last races, but being in the paddock during the vintage races with the chance to talk to owners of Bugatti’s, Ferrari’s, Porsches, Maserati’s, Lotuses, Allards, MGs, Alfas and all the rest was like a dream. Whenever I bring friends they got a track walk with explanations for every dip, curve and curb’s placement while we look at the collector cars parked on track for the Sunday concours.

The paddock was still grass when I started visiting the track and usually there was enough passing rain to turn the paddock to mud. It was charming, but having a paved paddock we do today is much nicer. The first time I saw Paul Newman at Lime Rock was at the unofficial race headquarters, the Interlaken Hotel just up route 112. I stayed there with my family for my first race which was actually an Endurance Karting event on the autocross course. There were four or five of us doing a six hour race. I can’t remember how we finished, but I remember getting to lead us off based on my qualifying time. The start was Le Mans style with a run across the track and a hop into the seat. My hop was off. I smashed on top of one of the sides of the seat on my way down. Back at the hotel I felt like the kart had landed on me instead of the other way around. I was glad to have my family there, my daughter Clair and wife Ellen, have been back to the track a couple of times in the twenty-some years since to lend their support, but I’ve seen no reason to torture or bore them while I used up a bunch of rubber and gas. Our son Massimo (Max) on the other hand, who is consistently faster than me now was there too.

The morning after the kart race we were in the lobby to meet my old friend and basketball coach and his wife who had resettled at the Salisbury School. We were super excited to see each other. It had been several years and they had never met my family before. Anyway, Max was on the floor with a toy car – what else? – when out of the corner of my eye I saw Newman come into the lobby. My reunion was blocking the way to the reception desk and as Paul got closer I could see him bobbing and weaving while trying to find a way past. When the receptionist called out his name, those baby blues of his flashed a look that intimating he wanted to strangle the receptionist for blurting it out. The next thing I knew Paul Newman was backing up and Max was racing his car on his hands and knees. It looked like a nasty wreck was about to happen and as many times as I’ve scared myself in a car on a track I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as scared as at that moment when I thought I’d be responsible for killing Paul Newman. I swear my life passed before me. I think Max made a left and Paul made a right. I sighed a sigh of relief.

I didn’t do SCCA race school at Lime Rock but I did have my first trip off the track at the bottom of the Downhill and got my first race win there too. I was so excited to have passed one of my race school instructors in West Bend that I stopped paying attention to where I was going and ended up a few feet off the apex in the Downhill. Spinning across the track inside and then outside yielded a broken front bumper cover. When I looked up and realized that me an my car were in one piece I saw the corner worker waving at me like a lunatic to get out of the way and get going. Since then, I’ve spun at every corner except the Uphill. There’s not much room there so I plan to keep it that way. At my first race the rain that soaks the place so often came with the green flag. Driving into a curtain of rain separating start-finish from Big Bend reminded that I had done dumber things but couldn't remember when. I went from 20th to somewhere inside the top ten within a few wet laps. It was mostly just staying on the track while Miatas went flying by and skating off. I think I ended up 10th overall and 3rd in class. When I got back to Lime Rock for the start of my second season a friendly regional official handed me a very nice loving cup trophy for winning the Showroom Stock Class C regional championship. It’s my favorite trophy.

Before I started racing my second track day ever was in 2002 at Lime Rock with PDA (Professional Drivers Association that became NASA Northeast a few years later.) Car numbers were decided before we started while talking with Joe Casella at the pit lane fence. Joe ran class and talked about contact patches as well as the danger of using Armorall on your vinyl bench seats because it made it hard to stay in place while cornering… Instructors were not assigned. They jumped in cars on the pit lane for each session. My first instructor asked about my experience while we were driving around and went on about how a singing tire was a happy tire. Another said power didn’t matter. I think he was trying to make me feel okay about my new Mini’s 112 or so horsepower. After three track sessions they decided that I was safe to drive on my own. After all, how much trouble could I cause or get into in a Mini Cooper.

One year a friend of mine worked for the Dodge SRT program. It’s not around now, but for a while they loaded up a bunch of SRT vehicles on some tractor trailers and towed them around to race tracks where interested customers could play. They brought Magnums, 300s, Crossfires, SRT8s and Vipers to tracks like Lime Rock and had instructors drive hot laps. We got to use the Vipers for runs on the autocross course and Jeep SRT8s for 200-yard drag strip launches and the instructors sat in the right seats of the Vipers with their fingers poised above a kill switch rigged up on top of the emergency brake while we navigated the autocross course. Since it was wet (of course) the best part of the day were the instructor hot laps. The instructor I was with drove a Magnum. He seemed completely bored. I asked how many laps he’d done at the track and he said it was in the thousands. We talked about racing formula cars versus sedans. He said that that he preferred to race in formula cars. He said that since they were so light the feeling was better and in a crash they didn’t carry the momentum that a heavy converted street car would. My preference was and is to have a full roll cage around me to absorb the extra momentum.

I've thought of Lime Rock as my home track from the time that I went to my first vintage race. All these other visits have confirmed it. It is always special being there. Sitting on the hill watching the cars cruising around feels like I'm watching from my porch. For friends that haven’t been in a car it’s hard to explain how busy it really is trying to balance traction with going forward. It doesn’t always work out. Like I mentioned, I’ve been off at almost every corner.