The month of May is just around the corner, and with it, the anticipation for the Indianapolis 500 is at a fever pitch. But before facing the Indy GP and the Indy 500, the drivers of the IndyCar Series must first face the challenge of Barber Motorsports Park. For the second consecutive year, the ‘no tickets’ sign has been hung for a Alabama Grand Prix whose race will be the first competitive activity in May, and the fourth of the 2022 season after those held in St. Petersburg, Texas and Long Beach.
It was at Barber, in the first race of the late start of 2021 just over a year ago, where Álex Palou achieved the first of the three victories of his championship season, despite being the first time he competed on this circuit when his race was canceled in 2020. Barber is a track with a peculiar history for Spanish drivers: here Fernando Alonso disputed his only test on the circuit at the wheel of a IndyCar in 2018, and Oriol Servià finished fifth in the 2011 editionthe year in which Víctor García achieved his only victory in Indy Lights on this track.
This route, located near the city of Birmingham, was financed by George W Barber, a real estate developer and former owner of the largest dairy company in the state of Alabama. After selling his businesses, his passion for motorcycling and historical restoration led him to promote the construction of this circuit in 2003. In this enclosure, in addition to cars completing laps, you can find a museum that houses the world’s largest collection of Lotus bikes (nearly 1,000 different) and single-seaters, among other historic vehicles. In turn, the surroundings of the track are surrounded by gigantic and bizarre art sculptures, such as spiders, dragonflies, ants, a Bigfoot and even a figure of a woman hanging under one of the bridges that crosses the track.
With a length of 3,829 meters, the layout was designed for motorcycle races, being a circuit compact, with many flowing corners, several high-speed sections and a total elevation gain of 24 meters, as well as a natural three-turn chicane at Turn 7. This makes it one of the most physical circuits on the calendar, with high G-forces, especially in its final sector. Having drawn comparisons to Mid-Ohio over the years, the Dallara DW-12 has been able to put up some good racing at Barber, whose main overtaking point is in the hairpin of turn 5.
The Alabama Grand Prix is one of the few successful IndyCar ventures in the southern states, whose motorsports have historically been tied to NASCAR events at Talladega superspeedway. In fact, IndyCar had never hosted a race in the state of Alabama until the first edition of this test in 2010. With three victories to his credit (2015, 2017 and 2018), this is one of the fetish circuits of Joseph Newgarden, who arrives as the leader of the championship and in search of what would be his third consecutive victory. Six different drivers have achieved pole here in the last six editions, including a Will Power which he won twice (2011-12), came out first four times and finished second in the last edition.
With the other multiple winner at this track (Ryan Hunter-Reay) missing, the lineup of winners at Barber is rounded out Helio Castroneveswinner of the first race in 2010, Simon Pagenaud (2016), takuma sato (2019) and the aforementioned Palou, who faces his first permanent circuit this year, the terrain on which he has achieved all his victories to date. On the contrary, this circuit he has resisted Scott Dixon multiple times; The New Zealander has been on the podium in nine of the eleven editions, and in six of them he was second, but he has never won or started from pole.
Among the other competitors, only Graham Rahal (twice) has been on the podium, so there is great potential to see new faces at the top. Among them, a Romain Grosjean who had a solid debut here last year and who is coming off a second-place finish at Long Beach, a Scott McLaughlin seeking to consolidate its good performance from the first races and drivers such as Alexander Rossi, Colton Herta, Pato O’Ward, Felix Rosenqvist, Marcus Ericsson, Jack Harvey… All of them with different motivations, machinery and arguments to highlight this end of week among the 26 competitors.
12TH ALABAMA GRAND PRIX 2022 Sessions and Times
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