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—held at more than 20 of the most prestigious race tracks in North America
The Skip Barber Driving School powered by Mazda—five different locations, all at world-famous destination locations
The Skip Barber Race Series is collectively six separate open-wheel, equal-car racing championships—four regional amateur series, a national championship for drivers over 40 (with professional rules), and a prestigious entry-level professional national series that awards $100,000 to its season champion.
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:
150 racecars: With 60 Formula Skip Barber and 30 Mazda MX-5 Cup racecars for the Racing School and Corporate Events and 60 Formula Skip Barber 2000 race cars for the six racing championships, it is the largest racecar fleet in the world.
More than 75 passenger/street cars: BMW M3s and 330i sedans, Mazda RX-8s, MX-5s and MAZDA
3
s, and Porsche 911s and Boxsters for use in the Driving School, Racing School and Corporate Events.
30 transport and support vehicles: Freightliner Sprinters 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 Nextel Cup and Busch Series to Formula One, the Indy 500, Le Mans, the IRL and Champ Car.Since 1983, our Racing School has trained over one-third of all Indy 500 competitors and one-quarter of the current NASCAR Nextel 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.
