Lime Rock

The Italian Car Corral at the Lime Rock Vintage Races began in 1994 and was the brainchild of Mahlon Craft, who has raced at Lime Rock in his Fiat Abarth for many years. Mahlon’s idea for the Corral was transformed into a reality that year by Fiat Lancia Unlimited and the coordination efforts of Joanne and Terry Ranney of Vermont. The Ranneys worked with the Lime Rock Track management to get the skid pad area set aside for our corral and to arrange for parade laps. In 1995, Terry made T-shirts for the Second Annual Italian Car Corral. The Corral attracted more than 100 cars by about 1997. Coordinating the Corral for about five years from their home in Vermont was a difficult challenge for the Ranneys, and they asked me to take it over about eight years ago. I’ll save the second half of the history of the Corral for another time, but our relationship with the current track management has grown over the past few years with the support of our track representatives, Donna Lloyd and Fred Jackson.

For 2006, we had about 75 cars in the Italian Car Corral. Approximately 42 of these cars were driven by those who bought 71 Monday tickets through Fiat Lancia Unlimited. The remaining 33 drivers either missed our ticket deadline and bought their tickets at the gate, or they had received tickets from sponsors, or they didn’t know about the Corral and were corralled as they entered the infield gate in an Italian car.

We had a wonderful array of Italian car marques and models. I took an inventory of the cars in our Corral, and you can see the wide range of models in the table to the right. In all, there were 20 Fiats, 4 Lancias, 28 Alfa Romeos, 13 Ferraris, and 3 Maseratis—quite a turnout!

The parade laps were held at about 11am. At that point, only 55 cars had arrived, and the drivers of five of those cars had wandered away and did not get in the lineup for the laps. A couple of other Italian Cars joined the lineup as they entered the Infield Gate. We hadn’t had parade laps in about five years—it was great to be back on the track!

Next year, we’re going to do even more. We will line up cars in the corral by marque, and double rows will have the cars tail-to-tail so that the fronts of the cars will face the alley. This will not only make the viewing of cars better by presenting them as a marque group, but it will also facilitate the parade lineup and allow us to have our cars grouped by marque in the parade. We will get professionally made signs to designate the marque for each row. And we need more volunteers to help, for such things as flagging in Italian cars from the infield driveway, guiding drivers into their parking spots in the corral, checking in the arrivals from the list of ticket buyers and getting the names and email addresses of those who didn’t purchase their tickets through FLU, distributing the giveaway bags, and guiding cars into the parade lineup. Please contact me at TBeeble@aol.com with any other suggestions you might have to improve the Corral and/or to offer to help pitch in. See you next Labor Day!

[Tim Beeble is affiliated with the Northeast Coast Chapter of Fiat Lancia Unlimited and does a terrific job running the Italian Car Corral each Labor Day weekend. Thanks, Tim!—Ed.]

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