Motorsports Park - Full Pin

Two Great Tracks That Are Worlds Apart
After hearing everyone rave for the last couple of years about how great Barber Motorsports Park is, I finally had a chance to ride on the track and visit the museum for this issue’s ZX-6R.Motorcyclist folks had been there a couple of times and were singing its praises every chance they got, and for once, I’m in agreement with them: Barber is a world-class facility, the museum is fantastic, and the track is amazingly fun and incredibly challenging.

With that said, the whole time I was at Barber I couldn’t help but feel it was somehow familiar-and not because of all the videos I’d watched before heading to Alabama for the introduction. It wasn’t until after the press launch was over that I realized the track itself is similar to one of my favorite tracks at home in Canada: Atlantic Motorsport Park. What’s ironic is that, given the similarity, the two tracks could not be any more disparate in practically every other aspect.

With 16 turns crammed into 2.38 miles, Barber is one of the tighter tracks in the AMA Superbike series, with the big bikes rarely getting beyond third gear. There are lots of elevation changes (up to 80 feet, according to the track info) and hardly any portion that you would call a straight. Atlantic Motorsport Park is tucked away in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia and is also called Shubenacadie, after a nearby town. It’s shorter than Barber, at 1.6 miles, but has 11 turns and is considered one of the tighter tracks in the country. Where Barber has its serpentine back stretch with two fast chicanes, Shubie (as it’s affectionately known) has the “rollercoaster,” an equally fast twisty section that winds over a couple of hills. In fact, the first ascent leading onto the rollercoaster is so steep that it had to be cut down a few years back so that bikes and cars wouldn’t get airborne off the top of it. There are also other, individual corners of the two tracks that are alike, and the way they are laid out through the trees is similar-although from the picture of AMP it looks like they’ve trimmed some of the forest back from when I was there last.

Zoom back from the tracks themselves, though, and the two rapidly differ. Barber is a magnificent facility close to a major freeway, with all the amenities you could need or want at a racetrack. The first time my brother and I went to (continued on page 130) (continued from page 12) Shubenacadie, we got lost trying to go by directions that read, essentially, “Follow the signs to the track.” At one point we even had to wait for a herd of sheep to cross the road. You can see from the pictures that Barber has a paved paddock and huge buildings, whereas AMP in contrast has considerably fewer conveniences and a mostly grass paddock.

“Someone was bold enough to think seriously that , so committees were struck, task forces assembled and working groups mooted. The dirt-racing clubs were enrolled with the promise of a track in the infield. The snowmobile club joined in too-the long, 180 right-hander is actually half of an oval; the other half is not paved, but the snowmobile racers didn’t care. Go karts got involved, as did the radio-controlled car racers.

The biggest difference between the two tracks, however, is how they came to be built. The story of Barber Motorsports Park is well documented, with the layout penned by renowned designer Alan Wilson and the facility backed by owner George Barber’s deep and generous pockets. Contrast that to AMP, which was marked out by some friends walking through the forest and funded by Nova Scotia’s Department of Tourism. Dave Monahan was one of those friends, and here’s his story.

“So we had people, energy, enthusiasm and knowledge-typical of the Maritimes, all we lacked was money. We did, however, have a member with a profound understanding of money. The Rally teams drove every back road in Nova Scotia and mapped every possible piece of land. Then this gentleman sold the logging rights for one of them to a pulp company and with that money went and bought the land! Tourism was big in the Nova Scotia economy then, or at least in the local politicians’ view of the world, so the Department of Tourism was persuaded that if they funded paving a track at Shubie, thousands of tourists would flock to it every weekend.

“OK, people and land and money-next came the track layout. Well, it turned out that everyone was an expert on track design, even those who no one could ever recall seeing on a racetrack. And people who had mostly raced on flat airports had a hilly piece of ground on their hands. Because of the economic situation out east, AMCRA members had a tacit understanding that we would all race 250s, and what 250 racers want in a layout is not the same as the unlimited guys want-nor what the cars want, but the car drivers were not unanimous either. There was lots of to-ing and fro-ing and countless yak-yaks, leading eventually to the committee’s agreed-upon centerline of the track being staked out and a groundbreaking ceremony. The construction equipment was poised to start moving dirt, so speeches were made and a shovel of dirt dug, and then the car people went home. Some of the motorcycle people stayed to be part of the work party and, by some freak accident, the locations of quite a few of the centerline stakes were changed. By the time this was noticed, it was too late; the track bed was built.

“Not enough money, of course, so volunteers built the pit wall and everything else, and picked up garbage and mowed grass-it’s still going on and always will, since the track is owned by the racers. There have been years when you couldn’t race unless you did x number of work-party hours. You don’t like the dirt on the track, grab a broom. Raffles of stuff donated by motorcycle importers paid for the second coat of asphalt, and racers and crews bring their own chainsaws and dump trucks. Other tracks are places of business, Shubie is a haven.”

Some of my best racing memories are from Shubenacadie: winning my first national, winning another just a week after destroying my 250 and riding it with a YSR50 tank bungeed on, and once putting my GSX-R600 well inside the top 10 of a superbike race. But I rarely think of getting stuck in the mud after a rainstorm, the new rocks pushed up through the pavement every year (making it even bumpier) or being afraid to use the restrooms my first time there.

Just like Shubenacadie, it’s the track itself at Barber that is the appeal for me-in my mind, a racetrack doesn’t need beautiful grounds or superb facilities to be great. A challenging, fun ribbon of pavement is all that’s necessary.

Photo Gallery: Two Great Motorsport Parks - Sport Rider Magazine

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Posted on October 8th, 2007 by Klaus Roe
Filed under: Motorsport, Video, Photo, Fun and Games