Oilpressure

This will be the first time ever, that Susan and I will not be in attendance for the IndyCar race at Barber Motorsports Park in Leeds, Alabama. This event started in 2010, and it was the first race I was ever credentialed for. When IndyCar held Spring Training in March of 2009 at Barber, we were there. We drove down from Nashville just for the day, to see the Indy cars run the road course in-person. It was our first-ever visit to a road course.

The event was not held in 2020 due to COVID. When Barber served as the season-opener in 2021, IndyCar was still following 2020 protocol and we were not credentialed for the race. So, we bought our own tickets and parking pass and spent the weekend being fans.

So to not be there this weekend and watching it on television is going to be a bit strange. But this is part of our cutting back process. We will only attend three race venues this season – our usual three weekends at Indianapolis, Road America and Nashville. With me retiring from my day job at the end of the year, I need to start saving a little more money. Plus with us now being in the Month of May, this would have put us on the road four weekends in a row – after spending two days in Indianapolis just last week for the Open Test. We are getting too old to pull off a stretch like that. We appreciate our rest when we can get it.

Having said all that, the Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix was always one of our favorite races on the schedule – and not just because it is so close to home. The “beautiful facility” didn’t earn that moniker by poor upkeep. There is a reason it is known as the Augusta of Auto Racing. It’s a shame they have started racing deep into the calendar. Mid-April is the sweet-spot for dogwoods and azaleas in the south. By now they have already bloomed and lost most of their flowers, if not all of them. A few years ago, Race Day at Barber was April 1. That’s too early. It was still cold, being just over a week removed from winter; the grass was brown and flowers weren’t even thinking about blooming. With Easter moving around each year, it’s hard to juggle Long Beach and Barber, but I sure wish Barber could go back to mid-April.

During those first few years, this was not a good race. It was mostly processional with the old style cars. The track was ill-suited for the Dallara IR-03; which debuted in 2003 – when turning left on ovals was the main priority for an Indy car. It was designed with the idea that non-ovals might appear on the schedule someday, but it was still just an idea when the car was on the drawing board. But when the original DW12 hit the track, this race suddenly got interesting.

Helio Castroneves won the first race at Barber in 2010. This has essentially become the playground of Team Penske. Between Castroneves and Will Power, they won the first three races there. Then Ryan Hunter-Reay won the next two, while driving for Andretti Autosport. Josef Newgarden won the first of his three Barber wins while driving for CFH Racing, the result of a one-year merger between Ed Carpenter Racing and Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing; before the name went back to ECR…but that’s another story for another day.

Three more Penske wins, between Newgarden and Simon Pagenaud led to single wins for Rahal Letterman Lanigan (Takuma Sato in 2019), Chip Ganassi Racing (Alex Palou in 2021) and Arrow McLaren (Pato O’Ward in 2022), before Team Penske won the last two races there (Scott McLaughlin in 2023 & 2024). All in all, Team Penske has won eight of the fourteen IndyCar races held at Barber.

This track is physically demanding on the drivers, but most drivers seem to like racing at Barber. The elevation change from the Turn One left-hander to the never-ending Turns Three and Four right-hander, gets everyone’s attention early on. The hairpin at Charlotte’s Web is a great passing zone, and the series of right and left-handed terms before getting to the Museum Turn is a very technical portion of the track. A good exit from the Museum Turn is essential for building speed climbing the hill of the backstretch, before hitting another long right-hander that dumps the cars onto the main straightway is part of what makes up each lap of the 2.38 mile, 17-turn natural terrain road course. I believe the 80-feet in elevation changes, is second only to Road America (160 feet) and twenty feet more than Laguna Seca.

For television viewers, the weekend gets started today (Friday May 2) at 3:30 pm EDT with Practice One on FS2. On Saturday, Practice Two will be on FS1 at 11:30 am EDT. Qualifying gets underway on FS1 at 2:30 pm EDT. Sunday’s Morning Warmup will be on FS1 at 10:00 am EDT; and the race coverage begins at 1:30 pm EDT on FOX.

Of course, the big question is…Will Georgina make her return? If you’ll recall, the mannequin that hung from one of the bridges near the museum fell during last year’s race. It fell onto the edge of the track, and eventual winner Scott McLaughlin ran over it. I don’t know if she already had the name, but somehow she picked up the name Georgina. I have seen photos that she is back in place, but moved a few feet further away from the racing surface.This was a photo I took of Georgina in the Barber Media Center, last year after the race – after she had already been run over by McLaughlin.

With the stranglehold that Team Penske has on Barber Motorsports Park, the easy thing to do would be to pick a Team Penske driver to win again this weekend. Newgarden has three wins there, Power has two and McLaughlin has two, but they are the last two in a row. But Team Penske doesn’t seem like they have found their footing in this early IndyCar season – not just yet.

I am going to go with a team that has only won once at Barber, with a driver that has never won there. Scott Dixon and Chip Ganassi Racing will win on Sunday. I’ll go ahead and apologize to the Dixon family now, for putting the Oilpressure curse on him. But the man is due. He finished second in the first four races at Barber. Then in the fifth race (2014), he finished third. Altogether, Scott Dixon has nine podiums – six second-place finishes, and three thirds – in the fourteen races run at Barber. Count on Scott Dixon to finally stand on the top step of the podium at Barber.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on May 2, 2025 at 4:03 am and is filed under Indianapolis 500. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.