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

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 a number of driving circuits: teen defensive driving, snow driving, manufacturers renting out track in a neutral area,” Irvine continues, “It’s a safe area where people can push their cars in ways that they can’t on streets legally.”

The AutoX event took place on the Proving Grounds, and it followed the format of autocross. Among the participants was Larz Anderson board Vice President Bill Keeney. Bill explained, “Candidly, I didn’t know what to expect, and so because of that, there’s that fear of the unknown. Between the track staff, who were three pros, professional drivers, it set the whole thing at ease.” Participants started with 45 minutes of Autocross 101 basics. “We went through the phases: enter turn, apex, exit turn,” Keeney continued. “That helped center my mind and allowed for an amazing day.” The morning was set aside for general lapping and education, while the afternoon allowed for timed laps against other participants. “I had no idea how fun it was going to be,” Keeney exclaimed. “It’s a very safe way to get a chance to flex some competitive muscles.”

Drivers could bring their own cars, and many did, but Lime Rock also provided spec Miatas to rent for the day. “It was the right move,” Keeney reflected. “It was like driving an oversized go-kart around the track. The full cage gives you all the confidence in the world; the Hoosier slicks are a level up, purposebuilt. It was spectacular….it was the most fun I’ve had in a car in years.”

For the drivers who brought their own vehicles, the AutoX event was an opportunity to match their growing skillset to their tool of choice. “The thing that really struck me was the wide range of cars,” recalled Keeney. “Cars from a VW GTI and an Audi TT all the way to a GT4 RS, which is a track missile. And you’d have a hard time deciding who had more fun.”

“There was a driver with an MGB GT with a GMtransplanted V6,” Irvine observed. “It was a really really neat car.” He noted that “autocross is the great equalizer. It rewards drivers who understand their vehicle…and the MG seemed to carry the theme of the day…it seemed to say ‘try me.’”

The Skip Barber School that calls Lime Rock home is an institution in driver training. Some schools will teach you how to maximize a particular vehicle or formula of racing, but Barber goes deeper. They teach you the fundamentals and skills to understand the physics of any size vehicle and how to safely throw it around a road course or autocross. And this was all done in a beautiful setting, in a format that fostered community and new connections. As Walter Irvine noted, “We love partnering with OEMs and facilities like Larz Anderson where you can bring people, and drive your own cars, and feel excited.” He continued, “This experience should be for everyone. To give them a motorsports experience, but also to give confidence when they leave the track, and that can also save their lives.”

Lime Rock Park is excited to be working with the Larz Anderson Auto Museum on future events, and expanding AutoX with even more rental spec Miatas for the day. Whether you visit as a spectator for an IMSA race or Historics weekend, or take part in a hands-on event like this, Lime Rock Park is a fantastic facility that’s worth a trip, even for the drive through the rolling hills of the Berkshires.

“Driving today is like a chore for many people between what they need to get done,” Irvine noted. “Fewer people are driving for the pure enjoyment. The drive is the destination.” For an event like AutoX, the rewarding drive out to the facility only gives way to even more fun on the track. Irvine concluded, “Driving…just the act itself is beautiful.” Whether it’s on a back road or on a closed course, we could not agree more.