Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
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photography by tk; illustration by tk racing while at Ha r va rd in t he late '50 s, Ba rber became a Formula One champion. He then went on to start a renowned race school with his name on it, which you can attend at Lime Rock's 1.5-mile road course. An hour north of Boston is New Hampshire Motor Speedway, a reg ular host of Nascar races and the largest sports facility in New England. Sign up w it h The Motorspor t L ab (1122 Rte. 106, Loudon, NH, 617-383-7655; motorsportlab.com) and you can whip around the speedway in a Ferrari F430 and feel the force of 503 horses in full gallop. Finally, t here's Thompson Motor Speedway (205 E. Thompson Road, Thompson, CT, 860-923-2280; thompsonspeedway.com), which recently opened a 1.7- mile road course that you can drive your own car on. To take it up a notch, Thompson's High Performance Driving School can put anyone behind the wheel of a racecar. Going pro as a supercar driver, however, requires more than just a lesson or two. It's a life- style—and an expensive one at that. 120 bostoncommon-magazine.com Her b CHambers Owner/CEO of the Herb Chambers Companies "My favorite car is a Ferrari Daytona Spyder in metallic beige," says Chambers. "I first had the car 35 years ago when it was new, but it got wrecked and taken away and I never saw it again. Someone fixed it and reached out to my friend Wayne Carini of Chasing Classic Cars about selling it, and he called me. Wayne restored it to the way it should be." billy Costa Cohost, "Matty in the Morning" on Kiss 108 "Black is beautiful," says Billy Costa, who loves his black Mercedes GL450 with the custom chrome package and black interior. "I like that I sit high up, and it has a lot of power and plenty of room to carry around all of my boating stuff. It is as luxurious as an SUV can get." steven leed Copresident, Royal Jewelers "This spring I purchased a car that blends classic and exotic like no other: the limited-edition 2005/2006 Ford GT. It is essentially a reissue of a famous 1960s super-racecar. I knew of the Ford GT 40 in my teens, never believing I'd one day own one. This car is rolling art." J o y R i d e s Who drives what in Beantown. "There are a couple ways to go about racing," says R .J. Va lent ine, a legend in t he New E ngla nd race scene. "One of the ways is you go out there and become a racecar driver, but that costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time. So what I decided to do is ma ke it in business f irst a nd ma ke enough money to st a r t my ca reer in racing." Since 1969, Valentine has built an empire of successful compa- nies, including Jiffy Lube, which he sold to Pennzoil for a st agger ing 18 t imes it s ea r nings. A f ter t he sa le, he conv inced Pennzoil to sponsor him a s a racer. Since then, he has raced virtually every kind of car on t racks around the globe, even winning the grueling Daytona 24 in 2009, a 24 -hour endur- a nce race w idely considered one of t he most challenging of its kind. "That took me 26 years to do," Va lent ine says. "It 's like t r y ing to w in t wo Super Bowls on t he sa me Sunday." A mong his many ventures, he opened F1 Boston (290 Wood Road, Braintree, 781-848-2300; f1boston.com), a clockwise from top left: After 20 years as a professional racecar driver, Will Turner founded Turner Motorsport in Amesbury, where amateurs can test their mettle on the track; Lime Rock Park in Connecticut has a renowned race school and a 1.5-mile course; one of the classic Ferraris in the Tributo Ferrari Rally; R.J. Valentine made a fortune as the head of Jiffy Lube before launching his successful racing career. photography by yasuyuki suzuki (turner); greg Clark/lime roCk park (lime roCk); Joshua simpson (tributo); Courtesy of ferrari spa (shoes)