This Month’s Featured Article

Above: Lime Rock Park CEO Dicky Riegel dedicates Skip Barber Tower on Skip Barber Day, September 1. Photo: Shawn Pierce.

How long can childhood dreams survive? What does it require for the fantasies of a wiry adolescent to mellow and mature, become so much a part of life that nothing can stand in the way of making them real?  

For Skip Barber, the eminence gris of New England motorsports, dreams were as close as the end of the neighborhood alley and as lofty as the world of international Grand Prix motor racing.

Straight-line fever

For a ten-year old growing up in Philadelphia, the world revolved around the family car, a prewar Ford, and the attraction of the alley running behind the family home. With his father’s carefully curated approval, Skip Barber began his driving career in unending straight lines. Too young to venture out onto city streets to turn the car around, he would drive down the alley, learning to clutch and shift and steer, only to have to stop, find reverse, and back up the length of the alley … and then start again. 

“I went backwards as much as I went forwards,” he offers with a wry smile. But, regardless of the monotony, he was driving … and learning to understand the complex choreography of controlling an automobile. And, he was falling in love. Sure, there was an outstanding baseball career in high school and even an invitation to try out for the then Philadelphia “A’s,” but he had other things on his mind.

First love, a bug-eyed beauty

With a scholarship to Harvard, Skip emigrated to Cambridge with recognized talent but without two nickels to rub together. Sports cars had become all the rage, with MGs ubiquitous in the garages of those with spendable income. His classmates casually raced their imported toys down Storrow Drive in the early morning hours. Time trials. Lap times. Drifting around traffic circles. Laughing all the way.

For Skip, who longed for his own car to join the 2am competitions, it became a challenge and led to a life-changing decision. Finishing his junior year, he took a leave of absence from Harvard, enlisted for a one-year term in the Merchant Marine and went off to see the world … and find the seed money to allow his dream to grow.

He returned to finish his final year, and with some much-needed financing provided by his alma mater, he bought his first sports car. It was a “bug-eyed” Austin Healey Sprite, a quick two-seater that became his first race car. Graduating from drivers’ school and obtaining that all-important competition license, the boy from Philadelphia took his spot on the starting grid for his first sanctioned race … at a fledgling racetrack carved out of the Litchfield Hills in rural Connecticut.  

Welcome to Lime Rock Park, Skip.

The Road Not Taken

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
– Robert Frost

Frost could have written his ode to life’s decisions with Skip Barber in mind. Crafting a career as a race car driver is filled with constant decisions, forceful, split-second actions, and a keenly developed sense of timing and bravado. Winning became a pattern for Skip as he matriculated through the classes of sports car racing in the United States, including winning three National Sports Car Club of America championships. His favorite competition car was his Turner 950, which he called his “Giant Killer.”  Winning became a regular event, even against the factory sponsored teams. Skip was fast. Very fast. Very skilled. Very shy. 

There were several moments in his racing career where taking advantage of his skill and success would have led to greater recognition and success. After he beat world champion Jim Clark in a Canadian race, Skip’s first as a professional driver, Clark congratulated him by saying, “See you in Europe.” Skip Barber, however, is not one to promote himself. As the saying goes, he does not “toot his own horn.” 

With a career that bears witness to a keenly developed, laser-like focus, Skip will casually admit that his humility may have taken him on the road “less traveled.” A noted race car engineer, Carrol Smith, once opined that Skip “was the fastest guy who never made it big.”

Find your line

Competition driving instructors are quick to encourage their students to determine the best trajectory through a corner – one that allows the driver to retain as much speed as possible without spinning out and leaving the track. Instructing aspiring racers was where Skip Barber “found his line.”

In 1975, with two borrowed cars and four eager students, Skip Barber Racing School became a reality, and the result these many years later is that literally thousands of aspiring drivers have been coached in the Skip Barber way to become champions. The best drivers in every major competition category from Formula 1 to IndyCar to NASCAR have been to “Skippy School” and matriculated with skills and coaching that has led some of them all the way to the checkered flag and the winner’s circle.

Skip based the emerging school at Lime Rock Park, which had a set up and a location that was conducive to a growing population of students. When the track came up for sale, it was time for him to make another critical decision. He gathered a group of investors, and they bought the track. Over the succeeding years, Skip folded school profits back into the process of buying the track outright.

Towering achievement

Track improvements have been a continuous process over the years. Naturally there was paving of the track and paddocks; bridge construction for access to the infield areas; creating buildings for offices, hospitality, and concessions; and designing and building the structure that stands at the start/finish line of the track. Skip turned to his long-time friend and fellow driver, Sam Posey to bring his architectural design skills to creating the building with its tower.

It is a time-honored practice to name parts of some international race tracks after memorable drivers and marques that have successfully competed at those challenging expanses. At Le Mans, site of the revered 24-hour race, Ford, Corvette and Porsche are so honored. At Silverstone in England, site of the first international Grand Prix race in 1950, Sir Lewis Hamilton’s name graces a turn on the revered track. At Florida’s Sebring International Raceway, drivers Dan Gurney, Olivier Gendebien, and Juan Manuel Fangio are all honored. At Lime Rock Park, celebrated drivers Sam Posey and actor/driver Paul Newman both have the distinction of having portions of the track named in their honor.

In 2024, during a year of celebrating the considerable accomplishments of Skip Barber and his contributions to motor racing, the tower overlooking the start/finish line was designated the Skip Barber Tower, made official as Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont issued a proclamation declaring September 1 “Skip Barber Day.”

The checkered flag

Membership in any professional sports Hall of Fame is recognition of a career that has been exemplary. Baseball, football, basketball, golf, tennis, motor racing – they each have their Hall of Fame.  

Players, of course, are recognized each year for their immense talent and contributions. Coaches are welcomed to this honor because of what they accomplish with the players they mentor, direct, and lead. Because teams do not merely materialize but rather are fashioned by owners who make the considerable investments required, legendary owners are also awarded this distinction.

Skip Barber has been all three – a driver, a coach, and an owner. From his victories in sports cars and Formula cars, through creating a celebrated driver’s school to turning Lime Rock Park into an internationally recognized racing venue, the modest boy who raced back and forth in the Philadelphia alley has demonstrated excellence in his chosen sport.

In recognition of an entire vibrant career, it was not a surprise when the International Motorsports Hall of Fame inducted Skip Barber into its rolls as a member of the class of 2025. The SCCA had already afforded him that recognition with admission into its Hall of Fame in 2013.

On to the next lap

Skip was never one to rest on his laurels. There was always another race, another season, another challenge. The summer of 2025 is no different. As a trusted advisor and counselor at Lime Rock Park, he is still deeply involved with a full schedule of events, from the annual Trans Am weekend over Memorial Day to the return of NASCAR to the track with the Craftsman Truck Series arriving at the end of June, some 14 years after its last appearance.  

A full weekend event that has been a passion of Skip’s for years is the historic festival, which attracts close to a thousand cars and several thousand devoted spectators to Connecticut’s northwest corner. The 43rd presentation of this extended festival weekend includes a 17 mile parade on Thursday, August 28, with historic vehicles motoring through the backroads of Lakeville, Salisbury, and Falls Village, culminating with a street festival on the Falls Village green.  

Racing of historic cars cherished by an international group of collectors consumes both Saturday and Labor Day with “Sunday in the Park” presenting classic cars of every marque parked around the mile and a half track and a highly competitive battle for “Best of Show.”

For Skip Barber, it’s another weekend at the office … and another dream realized … a dream that began  many years ago in the driver’s seat, a kid reaching to peer over the dashboard of a pre-war Ford rolling down an alley in Philadelphia. •