Between 1981 and 1993 the Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) Series was the premier road racing event in North America. The diversity of the series was one of its main attractions. In a single race you could see cars powered by highly-evolved 4-cylinder engines competing with much larger V-6, V-8 and V-12 powerplants, as well as the rotary-powered Mazdas. The colorful cars quickly became more sophisticated and expensive as the manufacturers supplied R&D and team support. In 1985, the International Motor Sport Association (IMSA) introduced a subdivision known as Camel Lights in an attempt to keep the field open to smaller organizations and privateers. The lights cars were smaller, lighter, normally-aspirated platforms with the same general "bubble top" appearance as the GTP machines, but were ostensibly more economical to campaign. The Lights ran their class in races simultaneously with the GTP cars. In 1993 another lower cost approach to racing appeared in the form of the open-cockpit World Sports Car (WSC) series. To explain the demise of the GTP series is beyond the scope of this photographic survey. It is also beyond the ability of this casual track visitor. For further reading I suggest "Prototypes-The History of the IMSA GTP Series" by J.A. Martin and Ken Wells.

In the rural area where I live the only legal exposure to automobile racing is at a few small oval stock car tracks. In the early 1980s, when my son was about 10 years old, we went to the local track one night. I don't recall his impression of the race, but it was our only visit there. A couple of years later we stopped by the only drag strip I knew of that was still open for business. It was a fair distance from home, but we had an enjoyable day. I was amazed that many of the cars appeared to be the very same machines that raced there twenty years earlier. Back when the term "energy crisis" was unknown here in the States. Amazing too, that in 1984 I would be seeing ancient 1964 Mopar "Hemis" racing down the track-and sounding good, too! Along with them were some 25 year-old fuel-injected Corvettes, and a few big Ford products. There are, after all, a few wild Rancheros at every drag strip. Except for the advent of the "funny cars", which I think can be accurately described as fuel-burning rails with plastic shells, the passage of two decades had not brought much change to the world of drag racing.

Around this time I recalled a place I had been to once around 1963. It was, and still is, the only sports car track in New England. I wondered if it would be possible for us to attend a race there on a father-son day trip. The destination was Lime Rock Park in Connecticut, and a close look at the maps showed it could be done in a day. All the better to accomplish the drive in a shiney imported roadster, but I didn't have one of those, so we made the trip in my station wagon instead. Somewhere, television perhaps, I had seen the interesting-looking GTP cars that were slated to appear at Lime Rock's Memorial Day weekend Grand Prix. I chose to go down on a practice day because of cheaper admission fees, smaller crowds, and a quicker return trip home.

We arrived as the morning fog burned off. It was almost 25 years since I had been there, but I recognized the pleasant green Housatonic range that surrounded the 1.51-mile track. After passing through the gate, we drove over the track on a small, quaint wooden slat bridge. Just as we did this, a group of cars in a morning practice session went zooming under us and out onto the front straight. As my adrenalin spiked, I could hear their exhausts echoing off the hills. Not exactly the Austin Healy Sprites I remembered from my visit years before. These cars were louder and much faster, and as soon as we found a good vantage point trackside, they severely tested my skill with a telephoto lens. Lime Rock is a cozy place, and you are relatively close to the action at most locations. It took a while for me to tune my relexes so I could properly keep the subject car in the viewfinder as it passed by at speed. Over the next five years we attended four GTP races, and as many fall vintage race events. Our range expanded to include weekends at New York's Watkins Glen race track.

Though the GTP series has passed into the annals of sports racing history, one can still see a few of the GTP cars at historic racing events. In fact, there are a number of GTP cars that travel across the pond to historic events in Europe, and likewise, some European Group C cars, which are very similar in appearance to the GTP machines, find their way to the historic circuit in the states. Every spring my son and I make plans to attend a race at one of the two tracks. We don't always accomplish this, but it's a good goal anyway. After all, somebody somewhere with a very expensive hobby has cabin fever, too. And he is just about ready to dust off his historic GTP car and go looking for a driver.

The color images that accompany this story were all taken on Kodachrome 64 film. The black and white images were all taken on TMAX-100 film. Minolta MC/MD SLR cameras were used, with a veriety of telephoto lenses. At some point in the future I may add images from the GTP and Lights action from the vintage racing scene to these pages. If I find a site that agrees to host WAV or MP3 files, I also have some high-quality stereo sound tracks that I created that would link up nicely with the subject matter.
Hope you enjoy the photos.

Tom Hildreth
January 2006