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This past weekend, Indycar fans were in for a treat: the Grand Prix of Alabama. Barber Motorsports Park is a course that is unyielding, and boasts incline changes, plenty of camber, areas devoid of runoff, and a daunting pace that makes Sonoma look like a funeral procession. Barber is also the first natural terrain road course on the Indycar calendar, and while the drivers have had time to turn left and right on the preceding street tracks, they tend to be a bit featureless in comparison. Barber, on the other hand, is chock-full of interesting little facets that take a while to master.

The front straight leads into Turn 1, which falls away at a remarkable incline and is off-camber, to boot. The lack of runoff on the exit and the relatively slow Turn 2 mean a driver needs to commit to the somewhat-blind exit. This means a conservative braking application on the straight, a sure-footed turn-in, and the driver needs to avoid the apex curb. At those speeds, clipping the curb means a quick trip into the barriers.

Turn 2 is somewhat uphill on the entry. This means the driver needs to carefully apply their brakes, making sure not to overslow the car on entry, and come out to the middle of the track at the exit of the preceding turn. There are two lines through Turn Two, and both of them are reasonably fast. The curved line takes a shorter route, and in a low-grip car is the best route to take. It also means an earlier and longer application of the brakes to bend the car around the corner.

Indycars will take a sharper line thanks to the grip available, which means they brake later, as well as turn later and more aggressively. Though the off-camber exit can make them understeer, a stab at the throttle can help rotation and carry them down through Turn 3, which is essentially the downhill portion after Two.

Turn Four is fairly straightforward, and quite fast. What’s important to remember is that the car ought to crest slightly off the right edge of the course, and since it’s reasonably straight, the line should be committed to before the crest without much steering change.

Turn Five is downhill, and so the brakes must be applied with a little care, and over a slightly longer distance than one would on a flat piece of road. However, the grip is stronger in the braking zone than it is in the turn-in and mid-corner sections.

To get pointed in the right direction, a bit of yaw from trailbraking is helpful, if not necessary. As the corner opens quite slowly and is off-camber, it takes a disciplined right foot to put the power down well. As there’s a long straight afterwards, it’s very important to keep that foot down and ride the car like a bucking bronco if necessary.

The quick left-right kink of Turns Seven and Eight require good timing and minimal curb hopping, but the speed is low enough to use second curb if the driver has a gentle touch. The straightest line naturally carries the car over the second apex curb with the inside wheels, and afterwards a little rub of the brake is needed to rotate the car into the off-camber, downhill Turn Nine. It requires an attention to detail, but it’s very rewarding.

Turns Ten and Eleven, a high-speed, left-right flick, is amazing to view and must be awful to get wrong. The speeds are high and so the driver needs to stay clear of the apex curbs and draw as clean a line as humanly possible. The entry is visible, but the exit of the second flick is not, and a mild lift of the throttle might be necessary to keep the car on-line.

Braking into this section should be done quickly, gently, and conservatively. Braking begins somewhere before the left-hand curb and the driver, keen to carry as much mid-corner speed as possible, should be back on the throttle by the apex.

The entry to Ten is uphill and blind, and off-camber, which allows the car to rotate easily. As the driver crests the hill and turns right into Eleven, the track flattens past the apex, where it’s very difficult to change direction. Therefore, a low-power car can take the approach gingerly; almost track-center if need be, whereas faster, more powerful machinery needs to late-apex Ten to get a clean run through Eleven.

Twelve and Thirteen, in an Indycar are nearly flat thanks to the downforce. Nevertheless, it takes one line only through the middle, and the driver must not try to apex too late unless they want to be spit off at the exit. The approach is similar to that of Turn One, where a semi-conservative entry is useful; there’s no room to correct mid-corner.

Fourteen takes guts, and with its combination of downhill entry and off-camber exit, presents a major challenge for low-grip cars. Indycars can use their downforce to stick to the road, and even exit track-center, but it can even provoke a little understeer with those bewinged beasts.

The long, tightening entry to Turn Fifteen will cause drivers of low-grip cars to try and use a bit of trail braking to set the nose in. This can lead to lots of oversteer if done incorrectly, and that can prove disastrous with the road cresting near the apex, which is also blind. Unfortunately, it takes a good run through Fifteen to set up cleanly for Sixteen and onto the front straight for a good lap time. This means plenty of practice, so that the arc of the corner can be fully visualized in the mind’s eye, and the driver remains patient with their inputs. It can seem like a long time before the apex is met, even with a very quick car!

Sixteen is the final bend before the start-finish straight, and assuming the driver has late-apexed Fifteen, Sixteen shouldn’t be too hard to get right. However, it is the most important as it leads onto the start-finish straight, and the driver ought to compromise their line slightly out of Fifteen to get a clean run through Sixteen and onto the exit curbs.

With low-powered cars, this corner can be approached from mid-track and taken flat, through faster machinery will require a sharper entry and a lift or rub of the brake to get the correction change done. More than anything, getting the right attitude into Sixteen will make or break a lap, so remain patient! That might be hard to do after the nonstop romp the rest of the lap has been, but that sort of variety is what makes Barber such a challenging and exciting track to drive and watch.

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