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Lans Christensen
Lime Rock opens season with Trans-Am Memorial Day Classic.
The parties reached an agreement earlier this month that calls for updating the decades-old operating rules for Lime Rock Park. The deal features preserving the Sunday ban, while establishing new limits on racing hours, unmuffled events, drifting and overnight activity. The deal allows a limited number of non-racing events on select Sundays.
“This is a win for the Northwest Corner of Connecticut,” said Lime Rock President and CEO Dicky Riegel of the agreement, which was approved by the state Superior Court in Torrington on May 12 as a stipulation to an original 1959 injunction that banned racing on Sundays in the Park. Under the new rules, Sunday racing remains banned, Riegel assured.
Although the agreement has already been approved by Superior Court and is now governing the track’s operations, Salisbury officials are still working to incorporate the new provisions into local zoning regulations. In the meantime, the Planning & Zoning Commission issued Lime Rock a temporary permit for the summer season while the zoning revisions remain under review following a public hearing on Monday, May 18 for the proposed change.
During the hearing, Riegel asserted that the agreement protects property owners’ interests while allowing the park to operate a robust season.
Riegel explained that the requested regulation change, which would codify the agreement’s new rules into town code, was the result of four and a half years of close collaboration between the Park, once he and his partners took over control in 2021, and the Lime Rock Citizens Council, a residents’ group with about 250 members formed to amplify concerns from the neighborhood.
Bill Rueckert, another general partner in the Park, said that he acknowledges the difficult history between the park and the neighbors, which has involved years of court arguments, and that this agreement should be evidence of the new leadership’s commitment to rectifying relationships with the community.
“It took time,” said Doug Howes, a member of the Steering Committee for the Citizens Council, “but I think we came up with a good agreement at the end.”
Riegel said the new rules “should be in place, we hope, for the next 30 years and beyond.”
International GT Sprint Race 3 at Lime Rock Park Opening Weekend.Madi Long
The last amendment to the stipulation dates to 1988, Riegel said, and the new agreement makes a number of changes to that charter beyond the maintenance of a Sunday racing ban.
Under the agreement, mufflered racing, where engine sounds are suppressed, is now limited to 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, when previously cars could race until 10 pm. Unmufflered races are now limited to 23 Tuesdays each year between noon and 6 p.m., and will also be allowed on 10 Fridays and Saturdays, amounting essentially to “10 unmuffled weekends per year,” Riegel said.
Unmufflered racing will also be allowed on three Thursdays per year to account for three-day weekend events.
Overnight racing, which was allowed five times per year under the 1988 amendment, has been eliminated under the new agreement. Motorcycle racing remains banned.
The stipulation also allows for a small number of non-racing motorized and non-motorized fundraising events on Sundays throughout the year, such as Project Sage’s Trade Secrets, which occurred on May 15 and 16 at the Park.
Traffic control, noise monitoring, and enforcement provisions were also included in the amendment. A full list of the changes is available via P&Z’s “Meeting Documents” webpage.
P&Z commissioners lauded the two groups for working together to find a compromise. Allen Cockerline, who said he remembers reading hundreds of public testimonials in prior applications relating to the Park, said that the hearing on Monday night, which saw zero public comment, was evidence of the agreement’s strength.
One condition in the proposal concerned him, though, as well as other commissioners: drifting. Drifting is a type of vehicle demonstration where a driver intentionally loses rear-wheel traction while maintaining control around a turn, often producing tire smoke. The new change allows for drifting to occur once per year on two consecutive days, with no more than three demonstrations of 15 minutes per day and with a cap of 10 participating cars.
Cockerline said: “The whole goal is to create as much air pollution as you can in a short period.” He added, “Personally, I think it’s offensive.”
Riegel stated that drifting is a fundamental component of the annual Gridlife event that visits the park each August, and that significant control measures, including air quality monitors, have been put in place since complaints arose about drifting three years ago.
Howes said that the group had taken issue several years ago when drifting first came to the park, but that limitations since have been effective in mitigating pollution.
Ultimately, P&Z told Riegel and Rueckert that regulation changes require specific language and procedure, and that legal consultation would be needed to rewrite the proposed amendment in a way that fits zoning code. The Commission recognized the urgency of the matter, though, with the first unmuffled race of the season occurring just days later, and issued the Park a temporary permit for the summer season as the Commission reviews the proposed changes.
The hearing will resume on June 1, where Lime Rock’s representatives will return before P&Z to continue the discussion.
Following Trans Am, the next big weekend for the park is NASCAR’s Liuna 150 on July 10 and 11.
To read about a local youth development program centered around auto racing, see Student-built race cars take the track at Lime Rock.
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Pine Plains teacher Jim Benincasa takes a parade lap.
Madi Long
Over the course of the school year, students build their car from parts supplied by Factory Five. They’re given assembly kits for one of a number of different roadster models. Pine Plains Racing built a Shelby Cobra.
On Saturday, cars from seven area schools were put to the test by professional drivers from the Dyson racing team. Pine Plains was joined by student crews from Owego, Arlington, John Jay, Ketcham, Dover and Roosevelt. All in all, nearly 250 students participated in the program. The cars are all street-legal, and are sold at auction. Pine Plains had already found a buyer before their car hit the track at Lime Rock.
“It takes a team to get a winning car to the track,” Mark Dougherty said. He’s the Build Director for the Winners Circle and travels to the participating schools to oversee and advise students on the project. “They’re trying to build a car, but we’re trying to build people.”
Students emerge from their custom-built racecars after taking a lap around a testing track at Lime Rock Park in Lime Rock, Conn., on Tuesday, May 19.Madi Long
At the project’s outset, the high schoolers join either the build or marketing team. They’re responsible for the car’s construction and telling its visual story, respectively. That wide array of interests is essential to the program’s mission, said Winners Circle Program Director Matteo Lundgren. “There’s real collaboration, and that’s like the real world. I love empowering young minds to think for themselves,” said Lundgren. “So when my buddy Pius had an idea to bring the trades into high schools, in a way that wasn’t isolated just for gear heads, that was pretty cool.”
Pius Kayirra is the Executive Director of Winners Circle. “The program has morphed into so much more than we could have imagined,” he said. “One thing I’ve learned is that if you give kids opportunities, they will never let you down. That’s really what WCP is about — coming together and realizing we are a team with a unified goal. ”
Two students from Pine Plains, Jackson St. Bernard and Luke Blackburn, offered proof of Kayirra’s belief. “It’s a lot of problem solving and a lot of new skills,” said Blackburn. “I’ve never worked on a car with this kind of power.”
“I already had something of a background working with my dad in the garage,” added St. Bernard, “but I learned a lot about fabricating things. We made a couple of brackets for the overflow tubes in the car.”
For a full breakdown of the program and photos of the cars, visit winners-circle.org.
The car built by Pine Plains students sits and cools down after a hot afternoon of track testing on Tuesday, May 19, at Lime Rock Park in Lime Rock, Conn.Madi Long
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