I'd been told that the Barber Motorsports facility was the nicest track the Grand Am Cup would visit this year. "Imagine a track plopped down in the middle of Disney World," one person had said. After a weekend there, I've got to say, it truly is a wonderful venue.

Situated in the rolling hills just east of Birmingham, Alabama (and not all that far from one of NASCAR's premier tracks, Talladega), BMP has 16 challenging corners with a remarkable selection of elevation changes. It's hard to drive really consistently, and wears out both the driver and car. But oh, when you get it right, a good lap at Barber is nirvana.

Given our problems at VIR, the team was pretty concerned that we'd get the car working properly for this race. To that end Crew Chief Ian McQuillan and I flew down on the Wednesday before the race. Ian drove to Birmingham to meet my parents (Ruth and Phil) who had towed the car from VIR to Alabama, and he and Phil spent the next 30 hours working on the car. They took the fuel cell apart, cleaned it, adjusted the fuel pick-ups, fitted a new fuel filter, installed new injectors, and a whole bunch of other things, including assessing the damage from the previous race.

After meeting with potential sponsors, and my childhood friend Ron Versteegh (who's moved to Atlanta after marrying his southern Belle), I joined Ian and my dad at Barber for a Thursday afternoon test. Unfortunately, after just one lap, our problem from VIR was still there.

To recap, our car seemed to put itself into "limp home" mode under certain conditions. I spent the session trying to get the car to do "it" at will, and after45 minutes had pretty much been able to do just that. At approximately 5,200 rpm, at a steady-state throttle, the problem occurred. I could do it mid-corner, up the straight; whenever. So! We'd at least found a small bit of data we did not have at VIR, where we were just driving to finish the race. Combined with the extensive number of things that had been repaired the day before, there wasn't much left: the ECU, faulty wiring, and... the fuel regulator! Sure enough, after a look at the regulator, it was clear that it was not working properly. We hoped it solved the problem.

Friday arrived, and we got the car through tech, and crossed our fingers. I did the first practice and to our great relief, the car was perfect. The set-up was good, and our Z3 made good power. I enjoyed getting better with each lap until the session was black-flagged after 45 minutes so the officials could rescue the GS-class Zippo Mustang from a gravel trap. Later in the afternoon co-driver Jody Trudeau, joining us for the third time this year, took the second practice and did a fine job of getting up to speed on a track neither of us had driven. We were ready!

Saturday morning brought rain; just a sprinkling. The day looked like it would be wet for the duration, which gave Jody and I reason to be happy, as we're both quite good in the wet and felt we'd finish well up the order if it was a rain race. I turned 8th-fastest time in that practice. But, as the race approached it appeared to clear up.

Jody started the race mid-pack in ST, and when the green flag dropped he made up a few places in short order. Unfortunately, he and the #39 BMW ended up getting stuck behind one of the slower GS-class 911s, and neither could get by. The 911 would pull away on the straight, but be agonizingly slow through the corners. Running with another class does add to the fun, but sometimes the GS guys do end up hurting the race of the ST cars by doing this kind of thing. If you're not racing for a position, and two guys behind you are, good sportsmanship should dictate that you'd let them by to battle it out. Of course, that's just my $0.02.

The race wore on and astonishingly, there weren't any yellow flags. Jody did a great job of driving consistent laps, keeping the leaders not too far out of sight. When a yellow did fall, at about an hour and ten minutes into the three hour race, we needed to make a call. Given that there hadn't been any cautions for an hour, the chances were good that we would not make our fuel window, which was pretty much right around one hour thirty minutes. So we decided to bring Jody in.

It was the wrong call. Who could have predicted that the last two thirds of the race would be a yellow-flag fiesta, with three more full-course cautions being thrown before the end of the race? But hindsight is always 20/20, and at the time I felt that we were being strategically superior, especially when the class-leading Turner BMW pitted at the same time.

The first part of my stint was great; I drove similar times to Jody (who has a driving style so remarkably similar to mine it's scary), and kept some of the faster ST cars at bay. That is until I tried to out-brake one of the Lexus IS300's and ended up taking a little off-road excursion that allowed a bunch of cars by. Only a few spots were for position, and they would have made it by eventually anyway, but I really should have done that a bit better. As the hairpin that the incident occurred in was directly across from the pit, I can only imagine Jody's frustration in seeing my error. Sorry about that, my friend.

After that, the race progressed as it normally does; the Z3's handling goes off as the tires wear, and we wait for some attrition. Unfortunately at Barber, that never happened. The cars in ST all ran well and were able to go the distance, which meant that some of the fall-out that we normally expect failed to materialize. We finished a creditable 11th, with the usual suspects of RX-8s, Turner BMWs, RSX's and Lexuses ahead of us. Interestingly, Matt Connolly's new BMW 330i was 9th,and the only other Z3 in the series was 10th.

From left: Jody Trudeau, Ruth Thomson, Phil Thomson, Art Trudeau, Ian McQuillan, Karl Thomson.

To be honest, I really was hoping we'd have a better finish for Jody. He's such a solid co-driver that it would have been nice to finish in the top ten together again, after finishing 6th at Mid Ohio. But that wasn't in the cards this time 'round, and I look forward to driving together again in 2005. A big thank-you to Trudeau Racing Enterprises and Art Trudeau for the opportunity to run together!

The finishing position moves me into 14th ranking in the driver's standings (of over 100 drivers), and the Compass360 team is 11th. We'll finish the year in three weeks at Fontana, just outside of Los Angeles. We'll see if we can move up just a bit after that event. Regardless, I'll have a full report after the finale.

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