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The Global Leader in Automotive Education and Entertainment
For more than 30 years, Skip Barber Racing has operated a fully integrated
system of racing schools, driving schools, racing championships, corporate
events and OEM events across North America. With more than 200 dedicated and
passionate professionals, no other organization delivers the same high quality
instruction, equipment, facilities and memorable experiences.
The offerings:
- The Skip Barber Racing School is held at more than 20 of the most prestigious race tracks in North America.
- Skip Barber Mazda Driving School, utilizing Mazda's performance sedans and sports cars, operates at five world-famous destination locations.
- The Skip Barber Race Series is collectively three separate, equal-car racing championships – the BFGoodrich/Skip Barber National Presented by Mazda, an entry level professional open-wheel series which awards a $350,000 title bonus to its champion, a regional amateur open-wheel series, and the Skip Barber MAZDASPEED Challenge, an amateur championship featuring identically prepared MX-5 Miata race cars. All the series are part of Mazda's unique MAZDASPEED Motorsports Development ladder system.
- The Corporate Events unit creates custom racing and driving programs for companies of any size that desire special, exciting events to train, entertain, educate and reward.
- OEM Events provides unique, specialized automotive-related training, analysis, evaluation, logistics and consultation.
The vehicles:
- 201 racecars: With 70 Formula Skip Barber and 61 Mazda MX-5 Cup racecars for the Racing School and Corporate Events and 70 Formula Skip Barber 2000 race cars for the three racing championships, it is the largest racecar fleet in the world.
- More than 94 passenger/street cars: BMW 330i sedans, Lexus IS F, Lotus Exige S, Mazda RX-8s, MX-5s and MAZDA3s, and Porsche 911s, Caymans and Boxsters for use in the Driving School and Corporate Events.
- 30 transport and support vehicles: Ford Econoline vans and Mazda CX-9s. Skip Barber cars and parts are maintained at five base locations around the country. With the largest race car fleet in the world, we can deploy transporters and school staff to tracks nationwide.
The track record:
Our instructional prowess speaks for itself. Since its founding in 1975, Skip
Barber Racing has trained more motorsports winners and champions than any other
organization of its kind. Skip Barber alumni race and win in every major event
and championship, from NASCAR's Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series to Formula One, the
Indy 500, American Le Mans, and the IndyCar Series. Since 1983, our Racing School has
trained over one-third of all Indy 500 competitors and one-quarter of the
current NASCAR Sprint Cup field. Our alumni have won every major U.S. auto
racing championship.
The founder:
John "Skip" Barber, one of a select few Americans to compete in the Formula One World Championship,
started racing in 1958 while studying at Harvard University, where he earned a
degree in English.
In the mid-1960s, he won three SCCA National Championships in a row and
finished third in the 1967 United States Road Racing Championship. Later,
Barber went on to win consecutive Formula Ford National Championships (1969 and
1970), a record tied only recently.
When his racing career ended, Barber's belief that auto racing was "coachable"
in the same manner as any other sport -- at the time, a distinctly minority
position -- led him to create the eponymously named Racing School, and a year
later, the equal-car Race Series.
In 1975, with two borrowed Lola Formula Fords and four eager students, Barber
started the Skip Barber School of High Performance Driving. In 1976, it was
renamed the Skip Barber Racing School and that same year, he created the Skip
Barber Race Series.
Within a decade of its founding, Skip Barber Racing became the largest racing
and driving school in the world. Barber remains active in motorsports today as
the owner and operator of Lime Rock Park, the famous road racing venue in the
northwest hills of Connecticut. He lives in the nearby town of Sharon, with
wife Judy.
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