Lime Rock Park

src: www.scda1.com

Lime Rock Park is a natural-terrain motorsport road racing venue located in Lakeville, Connecticut, United States, a hamlet in the town of Salisbury, in the state's northwest corner. Built in 1956, it is the nation's oldest continuously operating road racing venue. The track is owned by Skip Barber, a former race car driver who started the Skip Barber Racing School in 1975. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

Video Lime Rock Park

History

The 1.53-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 Callanan in an MG TC. In 1959, Lime Rock hosted the Little Le Mans race, won by Charles Callanan and Roger Penske in a Fiat Abarth. In 2008, the track was re-paved and two new corner complexes were added.

The track has a loyal following, 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, 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.

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

The Rolex Sports Car Series, American Le Mans Series, IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship have used a configuration which included the chicane at turn five and West Bend.

Maps Lime Rock Park

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 Chevrolet 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. Interestingly enough, the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship gives the distance of the track as 1.474 miles to be precise. The "classic" configuration is seven turns, while the three optional layouts are eight, nine and ten turns, respectively.

2014-05 Lime Rock Park Aerial Lap - YouTube

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Races

SCCA National Sports Car Championship (1958-1964)
Trans-Am (1967-1974, 1981, 1985-1989, 1992-1993, 1995-1999, 2002-2003, 2010, 2012-2015)
SCCA Continental Championship Formula 5000 (1968-1972)
Lime Rock Grand Prix
- IMSA GT Championship (1972-1998)
- United States Road Racing Championship (1999)
- Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series (2000-2001, 2006-2008, 2010-2013)
Pirelli World Challenge (1992-1993, 1995-2005, 2007-2008, 2013, 2016-present)
Northeast Grand Prix
- American Le Mans Series (2004-2013)
- IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship (2015-present)
Grand-Am Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge (2006-2013)
NASCAR K&N Pro Series East (1993-2010)
NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour (2010-2011)
North American Touring Car Championship (1996)