2019 Barber Small Bore Event
Sean Finley | June 19, 2019
The 2019 Barber Small Bore event was held at the amazing Barber Motorsports Park over the weekend of June 7-9 and provided a good time for small bike enthusiasts. Forecast for severe thunderstorms likely hurt the attendance and fortunately, the showers were intermittent. So the conditions were good for those that made the trek to Alabama. Although this was the first annual Small Bore event held at Barber, it has roots in the hugely popular Smoky Mountain Crawl that was held for the past four years in the small town of Townsend, Tennessee. The growth of that event drove the MNNTHBX (Man In The Box) team that created it to look for a new venue and they partnered up with Barber Motorsports Park to create a new home.
Yoshimura created a great recap video and below are some of the cool shots we captured at the event along with Justin Markwalter.
The event is designed for riders of small bikes such as the Honda Grom, Kawasaki Z125 and other small bikes and scooters to come together for various riding opportunities. The Honda Grom, which was first introduced in the US in 2014 has quickly become the most popular motorcycle in the Honda line so there are probably more people riding these bikes than you realize. The new venue allowed for diverse riding activities onsite along with great roads in the area for offsite rides. The onsite activities included racing on a mini specific track, a timed drag strip competition presented by Yoshimura, a stunting area, motorcycle soccer, a bike show, and the Kenda creek bottom classic off-road race, which included the slogan of “bring the wrong tool for the job”. Fun was the name of the game and a Saturday evening dodgeball game added to that theme.
Other entertainment included stunt shows by Aaron Colton and Jason Britton. And if you have not been to the Barber Motorsports Museum, that alone is worth a trip. The event also included a raffle for several cool items including a MNTHBX customized Honda Monkey with the proceeds going to charity.
We attended the event and captured some of the action to share with you below. You can expect the Barber Small Bore event to be back again for 2020 and beyond. Keep up with the latest at www.barbermuseum.org/events/barber-small-bore
Photos by Sean Finley and Justin Markwalter.
This MNNTHBX modified Monkey was a great example of the many customized mini’s on hand at the Barber Small Bore event.
The small track at Barber was a blast for the little bike riders.
The Barber Motorsports Museum is amazing! It is worth a trip by itself.
The Kenda Creek Bottom Classic off-road event featured challenging obstacles for the mini’s.
Yuasaku Yoshimura’s grandfather, Hideo “Pop” Yoshimura, founded Yoshimura R&D. Yuasaku lives in the US and enjoyed riding a Suzuki GSX-R150, which is not currently available in the US.
The crew from HRP Motors came all the way from Las Vegas to show off their Turbo equipped Grom.
The Yoshimura drag strip was a popular destination.
Aaron Colton (shown) and Jason Britton put on some great stunt shows.
The Saturday night Dodge Ball tournament was a blast.
You can expect the Barber Small Bore event to be back again for 2020 and beyond. Keep up with the latest at www.barbermuseum.org/events/barber-small-bore.
