===LIMEROCK Park=====
      for Grand Prix Legends
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       Mountain Circuit 
          Oct 11/02
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Lime Rock - The Mountain Circuit
 
When Jim Vaill, whose family owned the land that Lime Rock was situated on, was laying out the 1.53-mile track in 1956, he envisioned a 1.5-mile addition to the main course which would extend the front straight, rise up in the hills behind Big Bend and the Left, then plunge down to rejoin the existing track after the exit of the Hook.
 
Vaill got as far as bulldozing a "rough cut" of the Mountain Circuit, as it was called (its traces are still visible today; you can hike the trail), and it's in an "artist's conception" of the track prepared by industrial designer Raymond Loewy, but the MC was never built, for a variety of reasons, among them cost...and the lack of enough corner workers to cover the whole course.
 
Brent Adams' original Lime Rock remains one of the most authentic tracks in GPL (I haven't seen every real-world track that every designer's created, but I've seen enough), and it seemed only natural to imagine what he could do with a real-world "fantasy" track.  The Mountain Circuit remains one of the great might-have-beens in U.S. racing.  From what we can see of Brent's realization of this dream, it would have ranked right up there with Riverside and Bridgehampton - a world-class track.
 
Whereas Brent's 1.53-mile (and, with chicane, 1.54-mile) Lime Rock has been done in the modern idiom, the 2.93-mile Mountain Circuit is presented as it might have looked in 1957, when the track first opened to the public on the weekend of April 27-28.  Brent used Loewy's renderings, contemporary aerial photography, an elevation of the proposed addition, topo maps, and modern 3D satellite views to make the layout as authentic as possible.
 
Brent would like to thank Alison Hine and Klee Dobra, beta testers; Brock Yates for the loan of Rich Taylor's invaluable resource book ("Lime Rock - 35 Years of Auto Racing"); Joe R. Corbett, LRP's official historian, for the gift of a priceless repro of the original "Haybale" (as East Coast racing programs were called back in The Day); Jim Vaill and John Fitch for reminiscing with me, and, of course, Papyrus for creating GPL in the first place.
 
--Steve Smith
  Wyoming NY 
  U.S.A.
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On behalf of Klee Dobra, Kevin Schofield, Steve Smith and Alison Hine, I hope you enjoy the Mountain Circuit. Please refer to the web site for a complete list of credits.

Thanx, Brent Adams Saskatoon,Sask Canada Oct 11/02

brentadams@sprint.ca

WebSite:
limerock.racesimcentral.com