– HSR’s Second-Year Historic Stock Car Racing Series Visits Lime Rock Park for The First Time in First of Three NASCAR Support Race Appearances This Season
– Variety of NASCAR Stock Cars Retired From Active Competition Compete at Lime Rock in a Friday and Saturday Sprint-Race Doubleheader
LAKEVILLE, Connecticut (June 25, 2025) – The HSR NASCAR Classic racing series makes its Lime Rock Park debut this weekend as one the featured support series at this weekend’s LiUNA! 150 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race. The overall event weekend is a history maker as it is the first time in Lime Rock’s 68 years the 1.5-mile road course in Northwestern Connecticut hosts a NASCAR national touring series event.
Celebrating stock car racing’s history is what the NASCAR Classic series is all about. Open to period-correct stock cars that have been retired from active competition, the introduction of NASCAR Classic last year was a direct response to the increasing popularity of the former HSR Group 8 historic stock car class. Eligible NASCAR Classic competition vehicles include those built to previous NASCAR rule book specifications for Cup, Xfinity, Truck and ARCA competition. Current editions of the rules-eligible cars in each series, such as the Cup series Generation 7 chassis, are not eligible in NASCAR Classic competition.
The third round of the NASCAR Classic season, the Lime Rock Friday and Saturday doubleheader race schedule is the first of three events this season running as support races on national NASCAR series race weekends. Lime Rock follows the season opening races at the HSR Sebring Classic 12 Hour Presented by Mission Foods in March and the 47th HSR The Mitty presented by Hagerty in April at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
Leading the way to Lime Rock is former NASCAR Cup star “Front Row” Joe Nemechek who has scored the overall and Pro-class victories in three of the year’s first four races. Appropriately for the LiUNA! 150 weekend, Nemechek’s stock “car” of choice for Lime Rock is his NEMCO Motorsports 2007 No. 47 Made in The USA Chevrolet Silverado.
The only driver to beat Nemechek so far in 2025 is his NEMCO teammate and protege Ryan Gemmell, who took the Race 2 win at Sebring in his 2009 No. 6 Toyota Camry. Look for this duo to once again likely be at the forefront of the action all weekend at Lime Rock.
A NASCAR Classic debuting entry at Lime Rock will be the oldest car in the race driven by a popular team owner and driver who has the distinction of being this weekend’s “senior” driver in the series. The ageless Buz McCall, who is still actively competing as he approaches his 79th birthday later this summer, returns one of his original American Equipment Racing (AER) stock cars to competition after a complete and race-ready competition restoration over the last 18 months.
Chassis No. AER-971, McCall bought the 1998 No. 96 Caterpillar Chevrolet Monte Carlo back at an auction in January of 2024. The Chevy was one of AER’s top road racing cars and had what McCall refers to as “Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda” near-miss races in the 1998 season when Robby Gordon led with three laps to go at Sonoma Raceway and Ron Fellows qualified on the outside front row later that season at Watkins Glen.
McCall and his son, Brad McCall, have been competing in recent years in the World Racing League (WRL), and Buz took the Monte Carlo out for a few laps recently during a WRL test at Circuit of The Americas (COTA). The No. 95 and its septuagenarian pilot were nearly if not more than 30 years older than the majority of cars and drivers in the session, but that didn’t stop Buz from easily dusting off BMWs and other modern GT4 and even GT3 cars from similar manufacturers.
A two-day event, the NASCAR Classic Lime Rock schedule begins with two 30-minute rounds of qualifying this Friday, June 27, at 11:15 a.m. and 12 p.m. EDT. The back-to-back sessions are split by a 15-minute NASCAR Classic exhibition run for historic stock cars on site at Lime Rock but not competing in the weekend’s races.
Friday afternoon’s first NASCAR Classic race is scheduled from 5 – 5:30 p.m. EDT with the second and final round scheduled to run Saturday from 11 – 11:30 a.m. EDT.
Additional event information and tickets are available at https://limerock.com/events/
About HSR: Historic Sportscar Racing (HSR) is the premier vintage and historic racing series in North America. It was formed in the mid-1970s with an inaugural event at Road Atlanta and became a part of International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) in 2022. There was one goal then and it remains true today: to celebrate and enjoy the racing cars from the past. As a “time machine” of sights and sounds, HSR provides a venue for competitors and spectators alike to share in the wonderful history and excitement created by the cars that competed at race tracks around the world. HSR currently sanctions
eight vintage and historic racing events at some of the world’s most renowned race tracks, including Daytona International Speedway, Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, Sebring International Raceway, Watkins Glen International and more. The complete schedule and full event information can be found on HSR’s website at www.HSRRace.com. Look for the HSR Channel on YouTube and follow HSR on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/HSRrace/, on Twitter X @HSR_race and on Instagram @HistoricSportscarRacing.
Images by HSR/Jessica Johnk and Evan O’Hara/Low Shutter Media
