Skip Barber Racing School Files for Bankruptcy; Owes Lime Rock Park $1.2 Million

The school filed a petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday, according to the copy provided to The Drive.

The most prominent creditor by far is Lime Rock Park of Connecticut, the court filing reveals, with Skip Barber Racing School owing the track $1.225 million for track rent. Somewhat ironically, Lime Rock Park is owned by Skip Barber himself, who founded the school that bears his name. Barber has long since divested himself of Skip Barber Racing School, selling off controlling interest in it back in 1999.

The school also owes rent to several other race tracks across America, including $239,617.19 to Road Atlanta, $169,568 to California's Monterey County (the lawful owner of Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca), $112,000 to Mid-Ohio, $105,983 to Palm Beach International Raceway, $56,623.77 to Virginia International Raceway, and $29,600 to Willow Springs, among other unsecured claims to creditors. 

The filing declares that the school possesses assets valued at roughly $5.3 million. That includes a listed $1,489,500 worth of automobiles and $1.6 million in auto parts. It also places a value of $2 million on the Skip Barber Racing School brand name and training techniques. 

The Skip Barber Racing School was created in 1975, after Barber retired from professional racing and set about teaching high-performance driving as a coachable skill. According to the website, the school helped to launch the racing careers of Josef Newgarden, Spencer Pigot, Marco Andretti, Conor Daly, and many other professional drivers; it also counts celebrities as Tom Cruise, Patrick Dempsey, and Jerry Seinfeld among its graduates.