Antique car enthusiasts from the Northeast and beyond will travel to Lime Rock Park this weekend for the annual Rolex Vintage Festival of historic car races, car shows, and coveting thy neighbor’s car.

The hilly, winding, recently repaved racetrack, which sits at the foot of the Berkshires in Connecticut’s rural Litchfield Hills, occupies a sacred place in American motor sports. Built by the son of a local farmer who laid out the course with a bulldozer, the 1.54-mile track opened in 1957. Since then, Lime Rock has hosted some of the best Le Mans prototype, Nascar, and GT-class races in America.

But by Labor Day, the whiz and whine coming from the track on a race weekend amp into something even louder — the sound of 200 classic sports cars and 20,000 collectors thrilling in the antique automobiles.

Nine different races are scheduled for Friday, Saturday, and Monday, including a race between entries in the pre-war sports car class. Two of the more popular entrants are a 1926 Bugatti Type 35 and a 1934 Alfa Romeo P3. Races will also pit some of the postwar entrants against each other: Look for brands such as Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, and Porsche, not to mention muscle-car classics such as Lotus and Elva. Another attraction is a race of rare Formula Junior cars, a short-lived class of “starter” race cars that made its debut 50 years ago.

“The vintage cars are the stars,” Lime Rock’s owner, Skip Barber, said. Mr. Barber, a three-time winner of the Sports Car Club of America Championship and a founder of the chain of race-car-driving schools that bear his name, bought the track in 1985. “The racing cars built in the ’50s and ’60s, and even a lot of the cars built before World War II, are the most beautiful cars ever built,” he said. “If you take a 1967 Ferrari and put it beside the new one, anybody would pick the older car.”

Following a local ordinance, there is no racing at Lime Rock on Sunday. Instead, there’s Sunday in the Park, a series of car shows spotlighting everything from the famous three-wheeled 1931 Morgan Aero Super Sport to a couple of 1980 Ferrari 512s, the latter capable of lurid speeds.

This year the festival pays special attention to the cars of Carroll Shelby, including the GT350 Mustang and the legendary Cobra. First manufactured in 1962, the Cobra was created by stuffing a Ford V-8 engine in the body of a smaller British sports car. Today, original Shelby Cobras that once sold for a sticker price of $4,200 now sell into the high six figures and beyond.

One of the festival’s highlights is the appearance of a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO. The car is one of only 39 built, which might explain its hefty price tag. (One sold for $17 million in 1990.) “You could have bought one for $5,000 in the late ’60s,” the festival co-organizer, Murray Smith, said. “Now they are among the most desired cars.”

Vintage cars are prized for their rarity and provenance. Another standout is the 1959 Maserati Tipo 61, nicknamed “The Birdcage.” “The Maserati factor was trying to emulate the Lotus, which was making these very, very light frames,” Mr. Smith said. “Well, they made one that was lighter but it had one with more tubes than anyone had imagined. That’s how it came by its name.”

Mr. Smith, an avid car collector, said he had considered racing his own 1973 Chevron B26, but for the fact it had minor engine trouble at the Monterey Historic Races earlier this month.

Compared to the three days of car auctions and car parades at Monterey, Calif., and nearby Pebble Beach, the festival at Lime Rock attracts a different kind of crowd — often less polished than the cars. The racetrack doesn’t have stands. Crowds sit in the grass. “It’s really like a park only that there’s a racetrack going around it,” the author of “Indy: 75 Years of Racing’s Greatest Spectacle,” Rich Taylor, said.

Mr. Taylor, who also wrote a history of Lime Rock, has raced his 1967 Corvette V-Production and other cars at the Lime Rock classic-car races. “You get everybody from the guy who owns one sports car and works on it in his garage at night after work to people who are international names or have a hundred cars in their collection,” he said.

One year at Lime Rock, Mr. Taylor found himself racing against Phil Hill — the only American-born driver ever to win the Formula One championship.