Barber Motorsports Park Tag

By Frank Santoroski, Staff Writer This coming weekend the Verizon IndyCar Series will invade the deep South for the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama. The race is slated for April 21-23, 2017. About the Race The Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama is round three of seventeen for the Verizon IndyCar Series in 2017. The event is held on a permanent road course, the first of six such races on the calendar. The defending race winner is Simon Pagenaud, who drives the #1 Menard’s Chevrolet for Team Penske. theRead More

By Christopher DeHarde, IndyCar & Road to Indy Writer Over the last two seasons, Josef Newgarden has had his coming out party for the Verizon IndyCar Series at Barber Motorsports Park. The Tennessee native earned his first win in dominating fashion for CFH Racing in 2015, leading 46 of 90 laps and executing a daring pass on Team Penske’s Helio Castroneves to take the lead. But for Newgarden, this is more than just the track where he scored his first win. This is the track closest to his hometown of Hendersonville,Read More

By Road to Indy Now in its 32nd season and firmly established as the final stepping stone for drivers who aspire to compete in the Verizon IndyCar Series and the Indianapolis 500, Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires will celebrate its 400th race on April 23 at Barber Motorsports Park in Leeds, Ala. The major milestone will occur on Sunday in the second of two races at the challenging, 2.3-mile road course which will comprise the Mazda Indy Lights Grand Prix of Alabama Presented by Cooper Tires. “It is aRead More

By Christopher DeHarde, IndyCar & Road to Indy Writer During the recent Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, Ed Carpenter Racing’s JR Hildebrand suffered a broken bone in his left hand that required surgery. While still in recovery, the Speedway, Indiana team has called for the services of Zach Veach to fill in Hildebrand’s No. 21 Fuzzy’s Ultra Premium Vodka Chevrolet for the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park while Hildebrand recovers. While this is Veach’s first IndyCar race, it is not his first experience in anRead More

By Christopher DeHarde, IndyCar & Road to Indy Writer The third place driver in the Indy Lights presented by Cooper Tires championship, Pato O’Ward earned a fifth and a third place finish in St. Petersburg for the opening races of the 2017 season. However, he was uncertain about whether or not his season would continue. After speaking with Motorsports Tribune, it might be a good idea to pencil in O’Ward as an entrant. “As everyone knows, it’s a long championship so anything can happen here in a couple of months, but I’mRead More

By Josh Farmer, IndyCar Reporter Will Power logged the quickest lap of today’s Verizon IndyCar Series open test at Barber Motorsports Park during a wild final hour. With the help of the push-to-pass, the driver of the No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet and two-time Barber winner led a flurry of activity and unseated Max Chilton in the final seconds of the test with a blistering lap of 1 minute 07.7518 seconds around the 2.38-mile road course. The lap was nearly a half second quicker than Takuma Sato’s fast time posted in theRead More

To say that Colton Herta was born to be a race car driver is probably not too far off the mark, as the son of 1993 Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires champion (and two-time Indianapolis 500-winning car owner) Bryan Herta began racing soon after he learned to walk. Swiftly moving from karts to open-wheel, including the Pacific F1600 series (which he won in 2013), Herta first joined the Mazda Road to Indy Presented by Cooper Tires in 2014. He missed the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda seasonRead More

By Christopher DeHarde, IndyCar & Road to Indy Writer One of the more storied teams in the Indy Lights presented by Cooper Tires will close the garage doors as Schmidt Peterson Motorsports confirmed they will not be fielding a team in the 2017 championship. Despite nearly winning the 2016 championship with Santiago Urrutia, the team will be centering its focus on the Verizon IndyCar Series program after winning seven championships in the final step on the Mazda Road to Indy ladder The team had tested 2016 Pro Mazda standout PatoRead More

By Conor Daly, Verizon IndyCar Series Driver Well, the last two races certainly didn’t go the way we wanted them to. We have the race pace which is encouraging, and the team is making progress, but the results are just not there for us and to be honest it can get a little frustrating. That said, we’re going to keep on fighting and at some point it will all come together for us. I really looked forward to going to Long Beach. It’s one of my favorite places and races.Read More

By Frank Santoroski, Staff Writer Round four for the Verizon IndyCar Series is now in the books, with Team Penske’s Simon Pagenaud taking his second consecutive win on the season. Allow me to share some of my observations from the weekend. 1 ) Frenchy Can Drive Yes, I know that some racing purists hate this movie, but Talladega Nights  ranks as one of my guilty pleasures, and I have probably watched this film a dozen times. Comparisons between Simon Pagenaud and the Jean Girard character have been abundant since PagenaudRead More