By Preston Lerner

Skip Barber had a pretty good first act as a driver, winning three national SCCA championships and rising all the way to Formula 1. But it was during Act II, when he moved from the cockpit to the classroom, that his career really took off. “There is no driving school as recognizable as Skip Barber,” says Mario Andretti, who sent his sons, Michael and Jeff, and grandson Marco through Barber’s programs. Or as longtime Barber instructor Terry Earwood puts it: “I put Skip up there with Wally Parks, Bill France and P.T. Barnum. They had a vision of what they wanted to do, and they did it.”

Barber’s journey – which eventually led to him owning Lime Rock Park – began when he took a year off from Harvard to join the U.S. Merchant Marine and earn enough money to go racing. He went on to drive everything from small-bore sports cars to big-bangers, Formula Fords to a March 711 F1 car. But in 1975, he realized that he could earn more money teaching than driving, so he started the Skip Barber Racing School with a loan ostensibly taken out for a bathroom remodel. The first class had four students in a pair of borrowed cars, and the early years were a challenge. “We used to joke that they’d call it Skip Barter Racing,” says one of Barber’s first instructors, Carl Lane-Lopez, the author of the indispensable how-to, Going Faster! “He bartered for trucks, he bartered for airplane rides, he bartered for haircuts, he bartered for Lime Rock.”

One of the school’s great strengths was its unique curriculum. While other instructors taught the classical technique of braking in a straight line, Barber’s staff adopted the “friction circle” philosophy popularized by Mark Donohue, which called for braking and turning at the same time – what’s now popularly known as trail-braking. Also, while most of Barber’s rivals were based at one or two tracks, he took his show on the road and planted the flag at circuits all over the country. Perhaps most important, he developed his own racing program for so-called Skippy cars. In the days when SCCA was the only game in town, this in-house race series offered newbies a seamless entrée into club racing – and beyond.

More than 400,000 people have graduated from the school, which Barber sold in 1999. Alums range from amateurs like Tom Cruise and iRacing founder Dave Kaemmer to pros such as Jeff Gordon and Danica Patrick. The honor roll also includes four Indianapolis 500 winners – Juan Pablo Montoya, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Alexander Rossi and Josef Newgarden. “Skip Barber provided a gateway for me to get into single-seater racing,” says Newgarden, who went through several Barber classes and racing programs after excelling in go-karts. 

The school’s success allowed Barber to buy Lime Rock – where he’d run his first race in a Bugeye Sprite – in 1983. Despite the short lap length and a prohibition against racing on Sunday, the track became a destination for big-time professional racing as well as a beloved club-racing circuit under Barber’s stewardship. Although he sold the track in 2021, his fingerprints remain all over it. Yes, that tall structure at the start-finish line is officially known as the Skip Barber Tower.

Preston Lerner has written about racing for magazines ranging from Automobile and Road & Track to Wired and The New York Times Magazine. He’s also the author of seven books, the most recent recounting the saga of Shelby American.