The aggressive promotional thrust by a new front-office management team at Connecticut’s Lime Rock Park road course in the northwestern corner of the state attracted — according to circuit owner Skip Barber — the largest race crowd since the Grand Touring Prototype days of the late 1980s for Saturday’s Northeast Grand Prix. With local restrictions prohibiting any on-track activity on Sundays, Saturday’s gigantic spectator turnout for the Northeast Grand Prix, round six of IMSA’s 12-meet American Le Mans sports-car series, which marked 50 years of racing here, created long lines at track gates and delayed event starting times. A key weekend souvenir was the 50th anniversary Lime Rock pin Bob Zecca of Driving Impressions was distributing. Of particular interest to ye ed was the great number of children in the surprisingly big spectator turnout. This hilly site in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains is bisected by a stream between the sloping spectator area facing the main straightaway backing up on the main road serving the town and the twisty 1.54-mile circuit down below, the infield of which allows full spectator access to what other tracks call “the garage and paddock area.” This sector of Lime Rock covers several acres where team haulers are parked with adjoining tents and work areas and was visited from early a.m. until checkered-flag time by thousands of camera-bearing walkers, many with school-age children in hand. The program included races for the headline ALMS series (26 entries), the IMSA Lites (18 entrants) and Formula BMW USA (18 cars). The event marked the first 100-percent ALMS use of E-10 Ethanol (10-percent Ethanol, 90-percent gasoline) by all cars, and owners reported measurable increases in both power and speed over 100-percent gasoline. Pit activity on the commercial side was intense by participating car companies and particularly among tire suppliers. Goodyear, Bridgestone-Firestone, Hoosier and Pirelli are now all absent from the ALMS  (I didn’t see any Dunlop) but staff members from Michelin, Kumho, Yokohama and Hankook were busy-busy servicing their clients. The import of the event was evident when Roger Penske, who owns teams competing that day at Daytona (Nextel Cup) and Watkins Glen (IRL), chose to visit Lime Rock and personally support his two-car ALMS effort. He was rewarded with a 1-2 finish by his team DHL Porsches, which outraced the highly touted Audis. Unfortunately, the tape-delayed CBS telecast of the race, which aired Sunday, was disappointing, as have been previous ALMS telecasts, due to showing class positions only rather than overall running order. P2 dominated at Lime Rock, but the casual televiewer never knew. Why can’t the streaming video (after each driver’s name) show the car make and its class and then the overall running order? And to expect the televiewer at home to understand the lingua franca of auto racing is a mistake. A nice shot of two Corvettes side by side was labeled “GT-1 battle for the lead.” It wasn’t for the race lead, it was for the GT-1 class lead! After this column’s last week comment as to no TV money flowing to ALMS track owners, a savvy reader phoned to advise there is no TV money — period — from ALMS’s network telecasts, as all network air time is bought. It was also advised some revenue does flow to ALMS from its European telecasts, while a cost-sharing arrangement is said to be in place with Speed Channel for its ALMS coverage.                       

Those in authority at ESPN on ABC charged with producing Sunday’s Indy Racing League race telecast from Watkins Glen, which ended in a pit-lane scuffle between supporters of Tony Kanaan and Sam Hornish, Jr. over a late-race wheel-to-wheel bump, missed the boat in not replaying the bump in question so viewers could determine if the hit was accidental or deliberate. Would-be peacemakers may well have been the primary cause of the fighting by using roughhouse tactics. Marco Andretti bulldozed his car-owning father Michael out of a helmeted Hornish’s face while a burly, well-intentioned onlooker was delivering a powerful heave-ho to one and all before being knocked to the ground. Hornish exited his car and hurriedly approached Kanaan when an outsider threw the first punch. Kanaan, in his later interview, appeared furious over the incident, Hornish far calmer. This post-race episode was the most exciting part of a racing day that, unfortunately, attracted one of the smallest Watkins Glen spectator turnouts in memory.

Interest in stock-car country is centering on speculation Richard Childress may add a fourth Nextel Cup team to the trio he now fields for drivers Clint Bowyer, Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton. The knowledge that Kyle Busch will be on the market for a 2008 ride reportedly has whet the appetite of Childress. 
       
Will it be “Bye-bye Bud?” for Dale Earnhardt, Jr.? Business bulletins tell us Budweiser’s personal services contract with Dale, Jr. has a full year to run, but his new car owner, Rick Hendrick, says the four-car team Junior will join is fully sponsored. Meanwhile, Junior recently announced a new personal services contract with Sony, which he terms “not a flag-waving deal, as there is no target market or age group involved.” Despite the Budweiser uncertainty, Junior is saying his future “looks bright.”

Our weekly seagoing reader, Capt. Mike Rudderham, wonders if and when Yamaha’s new 5.3-liter (323-cubic-inch) V-8 outboard boat engine will find its way into a sprint car. He calls the 350-horsepower unit “a torquey little monster,” recalling the mid-1930s success in midget racing of the Elto 4-60 outboard motor. We wonder, too.

The strength of sprint-car racing in the Hawkeye State will be put to the test early next month when the Cox Design Southern Iowa Sprintweek, offering 10-straight nights of racing, unfolds at the Knoxville and Oskaloosa tracks. The sixth running of this unique annual series for both 360-inch and 410-inch sprinters with and without wings takes place Aug. 2-11. The event organizers, McTwo Promotions, the Marion County Fair Ass’n and the Nat’l Sprint Car Museum, have posted substantial prize money. They expect entries from 25 different U.S. sanctioning bodies. The first three nights are at Knoxville for winged ASCS 360 sprinters. On Aug. 6-7 the action — which will include the 410 gentry — moves 26 miles to Oskaloosa, returning to Knoxville on Aug. 8th for the four final nights. For Knoxville info call (641) 842-5431; for Osky data, the number to call is (515) 957-0020. Be sure to mention this newspaper. 

Brooklands, the world’s oldest auto race track, held its 100th-anniversary party in mid-June, and crowds got a look at not only its famous banked turn but the new Mercedes-Benz World, an entertainment center where a gala Grand Centenary Ball was held. This famous track, built in 1907 in Weybridge just southwest of London, became the center of Britain’s motor-racing activity, England having prohibited auto racing on its streets and roads from the day the first automobile appeared. Only a fraction of the original 3.5-mile Brooklands circuit remains, but it is a center for classic and competition car lovers and a place to recall the glory days of British motor racing. When you go to Goodwood, detour via Weybridge and eyeball Brooklands’s famous “Steep Curve.”

No way of knowing how many readers of this newspaper are fans of dirt-track racing, as I have been since watching my first knobby-tired, dirt-throwing race in 1932 at the Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., Speedway. So, it was sad to learn California’s Bay Meadows, the deluxe one-mile horse track just south of San Francisco which hosted a few championship races, will bow to developers after its 2008 equine season. It reminds all that far too many one-mile dirt ovals are now gone or no longer host auto races. My fellow dirt-track fans must miss the AAA and later USAC Championship contests held on the California miles of Oakland, San Jose, Sacramento, Del Mar and the original El Centro. Also gone to auto racing is the Las Vegas mile, along with the Arizona State Fairgrounds mile in Phoenix; Denver’s Centennial Park; the Missouri State Fair oval in Sedalia; Indiana’s Roby; Arlington Downs in Texas; Atlanta Lakewood; and though not fairgrounds, Pennsy’s dirt ovals at Langhorne, Nazareth and Altoona, plus Goshen in New York and Trenton in my native New Jersey. Far, far too many.