This past weekend (October 17-19, 2025) we trucked the Buick down to Barber Motorsports Park for round seven of the 2025 Optima Ultimate Street Car series, presented by Autozone (they didn’t pay me to say that, but Autozone kicked in a pile of cash to be the presenting sponsor, so I’m giving them their due).
If you’re not familiar with Barber, it is probably the most beautiful racing facility in the world. The grounds are maintained with the same level of detail as a premier golf course. The track facilities are world class. The track itself is the best asphalt I’ve ever driven on.
Then there’s my car. It’s a 1987 Buick Grand National, not a unit one normally associates with racing that involves turning, yet here we are.
The Road Rally
My trusty sidekick, Jenni, and I loaded up and left home at 6am, aiming to get to the track by lunch. Given Birmingham, Alabama, is only 5.5 hours away, we got there in plenty of time. We unloaded the car, got registered and through tech, and set out on the road rally.
This event, the Road Rally was a trip to the local Autozone. The way it usually works is we drive to the store, take a picture, and drive back and show the picture to the event staff. Boom, 100 points.
While at the store, we noticed a cadre of F-bodies, with a particularly interesting 3rd gen Camaro with the hood up. It was Operational Speed Supply shop car, with pretty nasty charging problem. We loaned a Leatherman to the cause while we were there. They managed to get it running well enough to limp back to the event site, but not much else the rest of the weekend with that car, which sucked. We’ve all been there. Their other car, Project Torch, did quite well, so it wasn’t a total wash for them.
Friday evening was Orientation laps on the road course, then the Novice groups only competition session, then bedtime.
Saturday’s dawn cracked with a beautiful morning that turned into a massively awesome day. The autocross course was set up on Barber’s proving grounds, which features the same amazing asphalt as the main track, plus a concrete section banked at over 22 degrees. The autocross course also featured not one, but TWO spots where the drivers had to make a choice: right after the start, there was a box with a green cone wall in it, and the entrance to the box and the exit were perpendicular to each other. You had to choose which way to go around the wall.
Further back in the course, there was a choice to go around one of the landscaped islands clockwise or counter-clockwise.
This is a big deal. Other sanctioning bodies I run with have been moving away from presenting drivers with these kinds of problems to solve. I’m not plugged into the workings of those organizations enough to know the reasoning, but I think they’ve lost something. This course was exciting.
Right off the bat, the Buick was competitive. We were trading moving up and down between second and fourth place all day, finally landing fourth in class and 11th overall in the Autocross segment. The best finish we’ve ever had.
Design and Engineering was also Saturday. We delivered our pretty standard spiel, and landed another good performance, ending up 10th in GTV, but 16th overall. GTV was full of very pretty cars this event.
Road course practice was next on Saturday, and this was a doozy. Practice didn’t count for points, but it counted for my ego. After Road America, where we broke during practice and didn’t get a time, I broke my personal record for Barber this time. Back in 2018, I managed a 1:56 lap. This year? 1:47. Nine seconds improvement. That’s staggering. Even better, I was just four seconds back from the front of the pack in GTV. I felt like I had a shot to push on Sunday and get even closed. Forboding.
Overnight Sunday, it rained. A lot. By the time dawn broke, everything was wet. Lucky for us, there was a session on track before us. Unlucky for us, it continued to rain and that session didn’t dry anything off.
The track conditions for the morning session were precarious. I couldn’t use anything close to full throttle anywhere, and any time I tried to push the car started to dance around. This session was about survival. On the bad luck side, the track started to dry just at the end of the session, which gave the session that ran after me a nearly dry track and nearly dry track times. I still wasn’t horrible, but I lost some ground.
The afternoon was the Peak Performance Challenge, my nemesis of these events. This time, I ended up 20th overall and fourth in GTV. Huge!
Then the afternoon track session. The weather was perfect, the sun was out, the track was dry, and… I didn’t go faster. I didn’t go slower, either. I managed a 1:48. Not the best. The fastest cars were in the high 1:30s, but still way better than 2018. I was a tad disappointed at the time, but really, it wasn’t bad at all.
So, the end result? Fourth in GTV and 13th overall. The best I’ve ever placed at one of these. I scored 439 points, the most I’ve ever scored at an Optima Ultimate Street Car event. That was huge.
So, we stuck around for awards, clapped for our friends that landed in the trophies, loaded up, and headed home.
About an hour down the road, the phone rings. It was Optima Batteries. With the 401 point performance at Road America and the 439 points earned at Barber, I’d scored 840 points for the season, good enough for 10th overall in GTV and another invite to the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitional in Las Vegas, at the SEMA show.
Wow. When I started the year, I wasn’t even gunning for a SEMA invite. In years were that was a goal, I’d run at least four events so I had a few to throw away (depending on the year, they only counted the top two or three events towards season points). This year, I picked two tracks I wanted to run and just went, expecting nothing.
To get back into the invitational without really trying is a big deal. This car has come a very, very long way.
Big thanks to Jenni, my superstar spartner, Boost Crew Motorsports for all the help, Optima Batteries sponsoring this series over all the long years, and all the other segment sponsors like Falken Tire, Peak Performance, Gearhead Classics, Summit Racing, and Racetreads and all the other sponsors for helping keep these events affordable for us racers.
Next up is Vegas! The car needs very little prep. Basically fluids and a bath, so that’s exciting.
About the Author
