E X P E R I E N C E BARBER - APRIL 4-6, 2025
Slicer’s Corner
Greetings Barber Motorsport Park VIP Superfans!
We hope you enjoyed the “best seats” in the house, rain or shine.
It was a privilege to host so many champions in the Paddock Club over the weekend. Former World GP Champions and AMA Hall of Famers Kenny Roberts, Freddie Spencer, Wayne Rainey, and Kenny Roberts Jr. joined us, alongside current racers and future AMA Hall of Famers Josh Hayes and Cameron Beaubier, while adding in many future potential champions. Their presence made for two unforgettable days!
Saturday’s sunny skies set the stage for an incredible day. Before the opening ceremonies, we were entertained by the phenomenal London Koi. Her spirited voice continues to wow everyone—she is simply remarkable!
On-track conditions varied dramatically across the weekend. Saturday was blessed with ideal racing conditions, while Sunday’s rain tested the skill and resilience of competitors on Barber’s challenging 2.38-mile circuit. With five classes competing, the action was non-stop both days.
We truly appreciate each of you, our valued guests—including over a dozen returning VIPs—who joined us at Barber Motorsports Park. Your enthusiasm and support inspire our speakers and racers alike.
Thank you once again for spending your time with us. Don’t forget to explore the new features in our VIP Superfan magazine and share it with friends. Our next round is at Road Atlanta on May 4–5, 2025—we hope to see you there!
Best Regards,
Ron “Slicer”Heben
GUEST SPEAKERS
Mathew Chapin, Freddie Spencer, Cameron Beaubier, Michael Martin, Kenny Roberts Jr., London Koi, Josh Hayes, Tony Romo, Brianna Cutler, Bryanna Everitt, Cassie Creer, Larry Meyer, and Sean Bice.
Saturday was a perfect day to be on the grid before the start of the Superbike race. We had a packed house, and everyone seemed to enjoy the festivities. Superbike riders Sean Dylan Kelly, Josh Herrin, Jake Gagne, and Cameron
all were up for photos with the VIP Superfans
Beaubier
Making it special! That’s what our MotoAmerica Superbike riders do. Week in and week out, these racers really appreciate their fans. Thank you, guys!
He’s back! The Camster and his Tytlers Cycle Racing BMW, on Saturday, battled with the Yamaha boys, and he came out on top with the first win of the season, with Bobby Fong and Jake Gagne close behind! Talk about crazy, Cameron, Bobby, and Jake each gave their podium trophies to three of our VIP Superfans! That’s pretty cool!
To the delight of our VIP Superfans, the Paddock Club hosted several World and National Champions, along with up-and-coming racers and industry representatives. Saturday was an ideal day!
Reunited:
Kenny Roberts Jr. Rides The Team Roberts
KR211V MotoGP Bike At Barber
Kenny Roberts Jr., who won the 500cc Grand Prix World Championship, then transitioned to his father Kenny Sr.’s Team Roberts MotoGP team, took to the track at Barber Motorsports Park during MotoAmerica’s Superbikes at Barber event as he was reunited with his 2006 Team Roberts KR211V. The bike features a Honda four-stroke, 990cc, V5 engine that is the only one known to exist outside Honda.
While fellow American Nicky Hayden won the MotoGP World Championship in 2006 aboard Honda’s own RC211V, Kenny Jr.— who was informally a de facto “teammate” of Hayden’s and, through Junior’s development of the KR211V, helped the Kentuckian clinch the title—finished sixth in the 2006 Championship with podium finishes at Catalunya and Estoril highlighting his season.
The Team Roberts KR211V is now part of the permanent collection at the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, and Roberts Jr. delighted the fans by completing some fast demonstration laps around the Barber Motorsports Park road course at lunchtime on Saturday.
“I remember my first time on the KR211V,” said Roberts Jr. “It was difficult to tell which gear I was in; the engine is so linear.
“If we had six months to find all the gremlins with the chassis that we found during the last 25% of the season, we could have been fighting quite often for podiums.”
Roberts Jr. actually led the race at Estoril and might have even won it if he hadn’t misunderstood the number of laps that remained until the checkered flag flew. Valentino Rossi ended up notching the win, and he regained the title lead after Dani Pedrosa inexplicably knocked down Hayden, who was his Honda teammate.
Still, it marked the last time a bike built by a privateer team led a MotoGP race or finished on the podium. It’s a feat unlikely to be repeated anytime soon.
The only motorcycles classified ahead of the KR211V in the final 2006 Championship Standings were three Hondas, a Yamaha, and a Ducati.
“It gave me a better perspective of what I rode, what I didn’t ride, and what we did with a lot less,” Roberts Jr. said.
MotoAmerica’s Sean Bice interviews Kenny Roberts Jr. in the VIP Suite. Nice work, SB!
The 2006 KR211V was originally designed and built by GP Motorsports, the U.K.-based firm founded in 1996 by Kenny Roberts Sr. The bike was a unique collaboration between Team Roberts and Honda. GP Motorsports designed and fabricated the bespoke aluminum chassis, and the Japanese manufacturer provided the four-stroke, five-cylinder, 990cc engines and technical support.
More fun at Barber.
MotoAmerica’s Hannah Lopa gets a moment with the sensational London Koi.
How about this? You got to have your picture taken with the likes of World Champions Wayne Rainey, Kenny Roberts, and Kenny Roberts Jr. Who would have imagined that?
Having fun on the pre-grid. It’s all about the VIP Superfan Experience
Josh Hayes and PJ Jacobson, still rain-drenched from their Superport race, stopped in for a quick picture with our enthusiastic VIP Superfans!
Wait a minute now, Jake’s back! Jake Gagne was flawless on Sunday in the rain and outdistanced everyone. It was great to see Jake back in form. It’s gonna be a GREAT season! Foul weather did not stop our VIP Superfans from celebrating with Jake, Cam, and Josh. Once again, Jake made it a very special day for one of our VIP Superfans! Here
Duly Noted Random notes, comments, statistics, musings, and bits of trivia from the Barber:
Rain In Biblical Proportions
MotoAmerica races in the rain. It’s one of the pillars of our championship, and we only hold our events at tracks where we are confident that we can maintain an acceptable level of safety for our riders when they compete in the rain. Lightning, however, is a firm “no go,” and we had some of it in the vicinity of Barber Motorsports Park on Sunday. It delayed our program slightly, caused us to compress some things on the schedule, and yet, we were able to complete almost the full Sunday schedule of races, with the exception of the Royal Enfield Build. Train. Race. program, which had to postpone their second race of the weekend and add it to the schedule for our round at Ridge Motorsports Park on June 27 through 29. Thank you to everyone involved with BTR, particularly the 12 ladies who race-prepped their Continental GT 650 motorcycles, trained to compete aboard them, and, of course, wanted to line up again on Sunday for their encore race of the weekend.
And how about that “biblical rain” that fell, appropriately on Sunday at Barber, which is located right at the shiny buckle of the Bible Belt, and where they have an inflatable church to underscore that fact? There was talk that some older gentleman was preparing to build an ark not far from the race course and among all the interesting statuary at Barber. I’d heard that he found lots of tall pine trees in the vicinity, but there wasn’t enough gopher wood to even construct a dinghy.
Doing The Ton…And More
Josh Hayes once told me that the 16-turn, 2.38-mile road course at Barber Motorsports Park is an ideal layout, but it’s like they stuck it onto a copier and reduced it to about 75%. That’s not a bad thing, mind you. It makes for some awesome racing, and the technical nature of the course really tested the talents of our riders.
Barber is not a high-speed circuit, but then, that depends on your point of view. If you think 158.0 miles per hour on a fire-breathing Superbike is fast, and I definitely do, then Josh Herrin‘s fifth lap of the 16 he completed aboard his Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati Panigale V4 R during Friday morning Practice 1 was fast. In fact, it was the fastest trap speed recorded over the entire weekend.
Here are the highest trap speeds achieved in the other four race classes this past weekend at Barber, and the riders and bikes that achieved those velocities:
144.5 miles per hours, PJ Jacobsen, Rahal Ducati Moto w/EXPEL Panigale V2, Motovation Supersport Qualifying 2, Lap 14 of 16
130.7 miles per hour, Alessandro Di Mario, Robem Engineering Aprilia RS 660, SC-Project Twins Cup Race 1, Lap 10 of 14
116.0 miles per hour, Sam Drane, Estenson Racing Yamaha Krämer APX-350 MA, Parts Unlimited Talent Cup By Motul Race 1, Lap 5 of 11
103.0 miles per hour, Kira Knebel, Royal Enfield Continental GT 650, Build. Train. Race. Qualifying 2, Lap 6 of 10
50 Ways To Lead The Others
BPR Racing Yamaha Supersport rider Josh Hayes was born on April 4, 1975. That means that, this past Friday, April 4, the “Mississippi Madman” turned 50 years old. He had a celebration with his team, as well as his wife Melissa Paris‘s MP13 Racing team and several other friends throughout the paddock. On Saturday night, he participated in a Q&A session at the MotoAmerica Volunteers Dinner held during every race weekend, and he was presented with yet another cake. When you turn 50, for some lucky people like Hayes, your birthday starts to resemble Mardi Gras with the prolonged celebrations. Well, after two birthday get-togethers, Hayes had another celebration in the prodigious rain on Sunday.
Aboard his signature number-four BPR Racing Yamaha YZF-R9, Joshua Kurt Hayes, the newly minted Quinquagenarian, marked his half-century on this planet by winning Sunday’s rain-sodden Motovation Supersport race two. And, he did so against a talented field that included defending class champion and multi-time Superbike race winner Mathew Scholtz and Supersport Championship runner-up, Superbike race winner, and former FIM Superbike and Supersport World Championships contender PJ Jacobsen. In other words, Hayes’s win was not an indictment on the talent level in MotoAmerica Supersport, but rather, it was a bold testament to the talent level of four-time MotoAmerica Superbike Champion Josh Hayes. The victory extended his AMA all-time race wins record to 89 just a day after Cameron Beaubier’s Superbike race one victory resulted in his 87th all-time race win. So, the net result is that Beaubier remains two wins behind his former Yamaha teammate Hayes.
From Wreckers To Checkers
Did you see Koch Racing team rider Sean Ungvarsky’s incredible podium finish in SC-Project Twins Cup race one despite his Yamaha YZF-R7 “looking a little second-hand” as MotoAmerica Live+ commentator Michael Hill would say? Ungvarsky was among the multitude of riders who crashed their bikes in the wet race conditions on
Josh Hayes notches his 89th all-time AMA race win. Photo by Brian J. Nelson.
Sunday but, somehow, the always-smiling Arizonan remounted his heavily damaged Yamaha and raced it across the finish line. He celebrated his podium-finishing result and gave an exceedingly heartfelt and inspiring celebratory speech afterwards.
Unfortunately, it was determined that, due to Ungvarsky crashing and then, a red-flag race stoppage that occurred not long afterwards and resulted in the race being made final, Ungvarsky was moved back from third to seventh in the results, handing the third-place finish to a very happy Levi Badie, who races for Karns/TST Industries.
According to MotoAmerica VP of Operations and FIM Official Niccole Lewis, “Per our Official Rulebook, if someone has crashed before a red flag and has not experienced a disadvantage, we will add a disadvantage based on the amount of time it took him to continue. Essentially, we are trying to make it so that the results would be the same as if the race wasn’t stopped.”
Undaunted by the literal setback, Ungvarsky never lost his enthusiasm, and he even made a point to walk over to Badie and congratulate him on his podium result. On a personal note, I’m proud to share a name with Mr. Ungvarsky because that dude is topnotch.
Cutting To The Quick
Weather conditions at Barber Motorsports Park, especially on Sunday, weren’t very conducive to breaking lap records, but Saturday was decent, and Strack Racing Yamaha‘s Mathew Scholtz took advantage of it. In the morning’s Motovation Supersport Qualifying 2, on his 17th and final lap during the session, Scholtz set a new track record of 1:25.464 in MotoAmerica’s middleweight class. Then, in the afternoon, Scholtz set a new race lap record of 1:26.089 on lap 12 of the 14-lap race one.
It was the first-ever race weekend at Barber Motorsports Park for the Parts Unlimited Talent Cup By Motul riders, so no records were broken because no records existed. However, class benchmarks were established by Warhorse Ducati/American Racing‘s Alessan-
dro Di Mario, with his eighth and final lap in Qualifying 1 recorded at 1:34.524 as the class lap record and his second of 11 laps in Talent Cup race one setting the race lap record at 1:34.969
Race It Like a Rented Motorcycle
Bad Boys Racing‘s Avery Dreher is competing in this year’s SC-Project Twins Cup Championship, but he technically doesn’t have a motorcycle to call his own. At Daytona in March, Dreher raced a rented Yamaha YZF-R7 and tallied a pair of fifth-place finishes in the two races on the High Banks.
For this past weekend’s Barber Motorsports Park round, Dreher’s sponsor CJ Czaia rented the Team Hammer-built Suzuki GSX-8R that was raced last year by Rossi Moor. On Saturday, Dreher put himself on top of the box when he chased down and overtook race leader Alessandro Di Mario to claim the victory in race one. It remains to be seen if Dreher will continue to race the rented bike for his family’s Bad Boys Racing team, or if Team Hammer might formally bring him into the Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki team based on his success with their motorcycle. Stay tuned.
The Artist Formerly Known As
A big topic of conversation at Barber Motorsports Park this past weekend was that long-time MotoAmerica racer Bryce Prince is now going by his actual surname, which is “Kornbau.” The Bakersfield, California, racer and motorcycle dealership owner actually mentioned a year ago at Barber that Kornbau is his surname, but it took until his BPR Racing team announcement for him to officially declare that he is now Bryce Kornbau.
By the way, in German, “Kornbau” means “grain production,” so you could say that Bryce Prince has finally decided to “go with the grain.”
We’re lucky because Bryce “The Artist Formerly Known As” Prince could have been like His Purple Badness Prince Rogers Nelson and gone with some weird, unpronounceable symbol instead of a cool Teutonic tag like “Kornbau.”
This is what it sounds like when doves cry.
Bryce also jettisoned the name “Prince.” But, he replaced it with “Kornbau” instead of an unpronounceable symbol
Sean Ungvarsky’s Koch Racing Yamaha YZF-R7 was muddied but unbowed.n. Photo by Brian J. Nelson.
Hold on to your seat and take a Hot Lap around
The Barber Motorsports Museum, located next to the race track in Birmingham, Alabama, is one of the largest motorcycle museums in the world, housing over 1,600 motorcycles and a substantial collection of rare and vintage cars, including an extensive Lotus collection. Spanning five floors, the museum showcases machines from over a century of motorsport history. Surrounding the museum is the Barber Motorsports Park, which features beautifully landscaped grounds adorned with large-scale sculptures and modern artwork, blending motorsport culture with striking visual art in a unique and immersive experience.
Photos courtesy of Brian J. Nelson Photography