Barber motorsports park - practice
Riding at Barber Motorsports Park has been a goal of mine for several years and it finally happened at the start of the 2026 season. In this article, I will walk you through my preparation for the event, what I learned, and my overall impressions of the entire weekend.
Preparation:
Since I have never been to Barber, I spent a healthy amount of time studying track videos, printing track maps, and taking notes. This made the first few sessions much more enjoyable because I knew what was coming. The finer details of braking markers, apexes, and etc still needed to be sorted out, but the initial studying gave me a solid baseline to work with.
My travel time was over 16 hours without including stops (driving). The total drive time was about 1.5 days each way. This meant planning meals and food storage would be required. Avoiding constant fast foods, gas station snacks, and overeating, I traveled light with some pre-cooked meals (healthy balance of protein, carb, fats), high-protein drinks and bars keeping the overall calorie intake low but efficient.
With the drive time being so long, I booked a hotel near the track the night before we could enter the track. This was a good physical and mental reset. To avoid risk of injury or over exertion, I used the hotels fitness room to walk for an hour at an incline. This was just to get the body moving, break a light sweat, and help get some sleep that night.
Friday:
Friday was dedicated to touring the huge museum at Barber and get setup in the paddock. The museum was a great opportunity to get some walking/moving done and see an amazing collection of cars and motorcycles. The collection is so big that it took me three-hours to walk through the museum. I took more time looking at some things than others, but if you are big into history, it could take you all-day to really dig into what they have.
After touring the museum, I ate some lunch and got ready to enter the paddock for setup. My pit setup stays consistent regardless of where I travel to. This keeps moving in/out efficient and also less stressful when riding or racing at new venues. Once setup was done, I had some fresh tires mounted on the bike and ready for Saturday morning.
Saturday & Sunday:
The first couple of sessions were just ironing out the details of what I studied versus what was actually in front of me. Action cameras have a good way of hiding things like elevation, speed, and etc. The spots that looked like small elevation changes on video were actually much bigger. Barber is a rollercoaster track! Even leaving pit lane looks a little downhill on camera, but in person it basically drops down and then goes up as you head towards Turn 2.
I did not make any major changes to the bike. I added one-turn of preload to the front forks to help with braking support, and then I came back after the session adding one-more turn of preload. The rest of the time was spent dialing in reference points, apexes, and exits. I personally found that Sector 2 was my strongest area. My weakest was the last sector of the track. I could not get a consistent flow going through there. With some focused effort, I improved in that sector but there is still work that needs to be done.
Learning Points:
I struggled in the first few sessions getting a good drive out of Turn 4. I was really late getting hard on the throttle and leaving a lot of free speed on the track. Once I dialed in my braking, entry, and apex point, it was my best sector overall.
Sector 3 mainly needs a little more commitment going through Turn 10. Because the apex is blind, and there are brake markers on the right curbing, it mentally messed with my head thinking I needed to brake. Turn 12 was also giving me a hard time. My line was too tight coming over the hill causing me to over-slow for the tightening radius.
Overall:
If you are considering riding or racing at Barber, I highly recommend it. The facility is well-taken care of with clean bathrooms, staff clearing out the trash regularly, hot water for showers, and even has pump gas/race gas on site. The entire facility is taken care of like a golf course and feels very premium.
Action:
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