Lime Rock Park was alive with history and horsepower on Saturday as Historic Festival 43 roared into its first full day of racing.
According to a release, nine groups of vintage machines lined up for 18 races along with a special exhibition from the Ragtime Racers, who rolled out pre-war Indycars complete with period attire. U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and legendary driver Skip Barber climbed aboard, outfitted in leather helmets, goggles and overalls for a ride back in time.
The biggest celebration of the day belonged to one of the weekend’s featured groups, the All Triumph/Kastner Cup (Group 5), according to a release. The festival paid tribute to R.W. “Kas” Kastner, “the man who turned the British marque into an unlikely giant killer in American road racing. On what would have been his 97th birthday, 40 Triumphs, one of the largest class fields of the weekend, took to the track in the Kastner Cup, a traveling trophy established in 2003 that honors not just speed but ingenuity, perseverance and sportsmanship,” according to a release.
For driver Joe Alexander, the Cup is personal. A longtime Triumph racer and close friend of Kastner,” Alexander inherited stewardship of the series after Kastner’s passing. This year at Lime Rock Park it became a true family affair, with all six Alexanders — Joe, Mark, Brendan and Sean among them — either entered or wrenching in the weekend’s competition,” according to a release.
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“Kas (Kastner) and I became very good friends later in life,” J. Alexander said. “When he was near the end, he passed the responsibility of the Cup to me. Now my sons carry that forward. It’s our legacy.”
Behind their paddock sat the Ambro, a Triumph-powered special that Joe first dreamed of building as a teenager. Today his grandson Brendan takes the wheel.
“It’s wonderful being back at Lime Rock,” J. Alexander said. “The improvements to the track are great, the weather has been perfect and to share it with my family, six Alexanders here this weekend, means everything.”
Kastner’s influence stretched far beyond one family. According to a release, “from his start as a young mechanic at Cal Sales in California in the 1950s, he rose to lead Triumph’s U.S. Competition Department, writing tuning manuals that remain essential for vintage racers today. His engineering approach allowed Spitfires, TR3s and GT6s to regularly upset bigger names like Porsche and Alfa Romeo. By the late 1960s his fingerprints were on countless victories, including a Kastner-prepared GT6 that ran the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans with David Hobbs, who fittingly returned to Lime Rock this weekend as Guest of Honor.”
“This is a celebration of his legacy,” J. Alexander said. “Every Triumph on this track owes something to Kas.”
