Rennie Scaysbrook | October 19, 2017
Weekend At Barber’s
We head to the Deep South to experience one of the world’s great motorcycle events, the Barber Vintage Festival.
May leads Taylor Knapp, Jake Zemke, Danny Eslick, Jason DiSalvo and Chris Fillmore in the early stages of the feature Formula Thunder event. He would never be headed and go home $8000 richer for his troubles.
There’s vintage motorcycle events around the world that command a certain level of respect—think Isle of Man Classic TT, Goodwood Revival, Phillip Island Classic, the Biker’s Classic at Spa-Franchorchamps. For us here in the U.S., there’s the Barber Vintage Festival, a celebration of everything two wheeled and fast, and, for the most part, old. It’s grown to be the premier motorcycle racing event in the country outside the Austin MotoGP, commanding spectator numbers and industry support MotoAmerica can only dream of.
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Photography by Etech Photo and Scaysbrook
This year’s American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association Barber Vintage Festival—the 13th in its history—was cut one day short after Hurricane Nate made his presence felt late Saturday night, which kept spectator numbers down (with no official numbers yet confirmed by AHRMA) across the proceeding three days of on-track action. Yet that didn’t stop the contingent of more than 1000 racers putting on a show for those in attendance, with the event marking somewhat of a changing of the guard for classic racing.
250GP bikes were out in full force at Barber. This beautiful TZ250 was a hit…
…as was this immaculate Honda CB900F racer.
In a segment of the sport started around Manx Nortons and AJS 7Rs, there’s been a shift toward more modern machinery as the demographic gets younger and riders in their 40s go racing on bikes they watched in their teens. That means ’90s superbikes, Yamaha TZ250 and Honda RS250 GP bikes, floods of SV650s and more than a few air-cooled Ducati racebikes.
Any Bimota Supermono is a rare sight.
The main focus of attention now appears to be Formula Pro Thunder for twin-cylinder racers, an event that commanded an $18,000 purse with $8000 of that going to winner Geoff May on his ex-factory EBR 1190 superbike.
The Formula Pro Thunder event saw some of the fastest riders in the country on some very special machines, all of which you won’t see at your local MotoAmerica race. It’s a category dominated by Ducati, with six Ducati engines in the top 10. Riders the likes of Jake Zemke, Taylor Knapp, AMA regular Jason DiSalvo, Chris Fillmore and Michael Barnes fronted the grid, with Knapp’s qualifying time of 1:25.9 just over 1.9 seconds slower than 2017 MotoAmerica Superbike Barber pole sitter Roger Hayden on the factory Yoshimura Suzuki.
The Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club had plenty to stare at, including this rare (for the U.S.) Honda VFR400.
But it wasn’t just Formula Thunder that had stacked grids. The Sound of Thunder 2 grid had an insane 58 starters on bikes ranging from air-cooled twin cylinder superbikes, to single cylinder 690 and 390 KTMs. Unsurprisingly, turn one was nothing short of chaos, as about five bikes went careering into the gravel trap which caused an immediate red flag.
Aside from that one major snafu, there weren’t too many crashes and even less bikes dropping oil than expected—a usual scene in classic racing. That allowed the program to run fairly uninterrupted, with those spectators that did show up treated to some exceptional racing.
This was half the grid for the Sound of Thunder 2 race. Half.
“The event has become really, really, big,” says AHRMA Chairman of the Board Carl Anderson. “It’s really amazing how many industry groups have shown interest and joined in on this thing. The first time we raced here in ’03 it was just a little club race.
“The place has become a destination for people around the world, which has helped us grow the event organically. People come because they’ve seen or heard about the event, and even though this year is a bit down, spectatorwise, it’s still a massive event.”
Beautiful Dick Man CR750 replica nestled in the swap meet.
Supplementing the tarmac racing is vintage motocross, the gigantic swap meet where you can either pick up a bargain or get substantially ripped off (depending on what you’re buying), as well as the various clubs like the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club holding a huge display of some beautifully restored machines.
Ralph Starapoli’s Honda RS250 is nothing short of a work of art.
Not to mention the incredible Barber Motorcycle Museum, which saw 4500 attendees across the three days of action. The museum also hosted the Motorcycle by Moonlight charity event in the Grand Atrium, which helped raise money for the not-for-profit Barber Museum. Up for grabs in a silent auction were leathers, art and sculptures, with a live auction that saw bidding on a painting artist Bill Patterson created in two hours onstage during the event.
There was something for everyone at the swap meet.
This year, event Grand Marshal honors went to the legendary Wes Cooley, and there was a special “Moment of Sound” tribute to the late John Surtees, the only man to win both the 500cc World Championship and Formula One World Championship, who passed away in March. Fans were treated to the sound of John’s 1964 F1 title-winning Ferrari screaming around the circuit, a sound lost to modern race fans.
John Surtees’ priceless 1964 Ferrari Formula One car was a sight and sound to behold.
With the Sunday’s racing a non-event, Hurricane Nate was downgraded to a tropical storm late on Saturday night but the track was still unraceable. The spectator numbers may well have been low, but the Barber Vintage Festival is still one of the great events in the world of motorcycling. CN
