North American Touring Car Championship Racing From Lime Rock In 1996! Wheel-To-Missing-Wheel Action!


North American Touring Car Championship Racing From Lime Rock In 1996! Wheel-To-Missing-Wheel Action!

The North American Touring Car Championship series was a guilty pleasure of mine growing up. Family sedans I saw by the hundreds, slammed to the ground, looking like remote-control racers and howling like scalded cats, battling each other? Sign me up, I’ll watch all day long. There’s no question I was hooked when I saw that a Dodge Stratus could look like a road-racing badass, and I was not disappointed in the least. There might not have been as much of the bash-the-bumpers-in, middle fingers and fights style of racing that European touring car races had, but if you wanted to see some good technical work and some great driving, this is the right place. Rhys Millen, Randy Pobst, and David Donohue, son of the legendary Mark Donohue all put in time behind the wheel of the touring cars for the two years the series ran, and while overall NATCC was a flop, if you’re a true racing fan, if you really enjoy watching drivers put in good effort behind the wheel, you had to be as disappointed as I was when I learned that the series hit the bin.

This footage is from the 1996 Lime Rock Round 1 race, and features Donohue and Pobst battling it out after Millen’s Honda Accord is forced to limp back to the pits missing it’s right-rear rolling stock. The photo of the newly amputated Honda might draw you in, but Pobst and Donohue’s driving is the real point of the video. These guys are damn good now, and were damn good then.


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2 thoughts on “North American Touring Car Championship Racing From Lime Rock In 1996! Wheel-To-Missing-Wheel Action!

  1. Rhett

    Saw this race from the hillside right above the esses. It was a great weekend all the way around.

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