Anyone interested in vintage racing should try to get to the events offered
at Lime Rock. The park itself is located in the beautiful Berkshire hills of
Connecticut. The atmosphere is very informal as well as the seating, which
consists of "bring your own" and pick a spot along the race track. Paddock
"B" is where I met the likable Henry Frye and his wife and friends along
with, Joe Alexander, Ted Shumacher and several others that I was introduced
to but couldn't hear their names over the exhaust roar of passing vintage
racers. Paddock "B" is where people in our, ahem, class are allowed to stay
for the event. Vendors as well as racers in, tents, pop-ups, and modest
trailers ply there goods or work on their cars.
The Main paddock is unbelievable (at least to me) in that it contains vintage
racers that have highly organized and sophisticated facilities and teams.
Some have limited sponsorship others are private operations, but all have
very deep pockets. Some of these teams have more invested than most of us
will earn in a lifetime. Several had 50 ft semis that contained up to 6 cars
with supporting spares. One team had 6 Listers in mint condition! What a
smorgasbord of vintage vehicles, some 80 years old. Names like Bugatti,
Morgan (including trikes), Ferrari, Alfa, Aston, MG, Triumph, Allard,
Masserati, Jaguar, Lister, Porshe (probably the dominant marque
participating), along with more that I cannot recall.
The first two events were 1 1/2 hour enduros. The dominant cars in these
races were Porsches, though there was a very fast MG B orC that was running
respectable times. Our marque was not represented in the enduro nor very
well represented in the other events. There must be some Triumph racers out
there that could qualify for this weekend.
The afternoon saw more of the varied vintage racing spanning decades of
automotive development. These events were much shorter in duration and
therefore very exciting as they only ran about 10-15 minutes. The 1920/30
vintage Bugatti, which had a ground clearance of about 16 inches a 3 foot
tires, flew around the course and bested cars from the 60s.
For those of you that are celebrity watchers, Paul Newman was running a
Nissan 300 ZX? and was doing great until he had some mechanical problems and
retired early. Because of prior commitments, I left the races a few hours
early so I wasn't able to see all of the events. All of us may see this on
TV, as Speed Vision had quite a few photographers patrolling the grounds and
doing interviews. I can't imagine why they didn't seek me out.
All in all, I highly recommend the experience for anyone that can make next
year's event. Maybe I'll see you there.
Gary Bouffard
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