GEORGE KENNEDY | PHOTOS: ETHAN PELLEGRINO
PROVING GROUND FOR PERFORMANCE DRIVING
SHARPEN YOUR SKILLS WITH AUTOX AT LIME ROCK Any given Sunday (and some Saturdays) throughout the year, you can descend upon the Museum and find your favorite classic and collector automobiles at a Lawn Event or Cars & Coffee. This is a unique opportunity to get up close and personal with fantastic machines and converse with the owners. It’s a forum to expand the community, and it’s enriching for both drivers and onlookers. But for many of these machines, their real home is out on the track. While some lower-horsepower cars can be pushed on open roads, for most cars—performance or otherwise—a controlled setting is the only safe place to operate, enjoy, and learn. That’s just the ecosystem that was provided in mid-June for AutoX at Lime Rock Park (LRP). While the 1.53-mile road course is known to many enthusiasts, they might not know that the destination of motorsport in the bucolic rolling hills of Northwest Connecticut provides multiple facilities for sharpening your skills behind the wheel. AutoX saw Museum members taking to the FCP 10
UPSHIFT
Euro Proving Grounds, located in the infield near the Paul Newman Straight. AutoX is an allusion to autocross, but this event was more than that, namely because the facilities are more significant than cones set up in a parking lot. As you’ll find out, it’s a track within a track. Representing Lime Rock Park’s interests at AutoX was Walter Irvine, the park’s VP and Director of Track Productions. Irvine has been with LRP for decades, first as a driving instructor for Skip Barber in the 1990s and then with track productions for over a decade. As Irvine explains, the main track is just the tip of the iceberg. “In the infield of the track, we have
