Barber Motorsports Park wants to host the FIM Superbike World Championship on April 18-20, 2008. Does the deal make good business sense is the question the track and its management company hope to answer by next week. “Barber Motorsports Park wants to be the host to a World Superbike event in 2008,” Gene Hallman, President of Zoom Motorsports, the company that manages the track, told Roadracingworld.com Monday. “It’s been our goal for the last six to nine months to land this particular event. Maurizio (Flammini, President of FGSport Group, the company that manages the Superbike World Championship) has been very accommodating during the process as far as access, discussion. He has made some concessions, we have made some concessions, and we’re very close. We’re running out of time for the ’08 calendar. That’s the biggest thing. “We have just a few items left to resolve, and we, Zoom, want to have all things resolved by no later than early next week. I think we need about one more full week to complete our due diligence. “I think it’s still a little premature to say one way or the other which way it’s going. There’s a couple of substantive issues that we need to work through. But we have made tremendous progress over the past two months in our discussions, and we’ve whittled the list down to just a handful of items.” The items to resolve are not related to the facility or track safety. Although it has not been homologated, the track has been deemed good enough by FIM Safety Inspector Claude Danis to be put on the World Championship schedule pending a few, minor “modifications,” according to Hallman. Those modifications are pushing back barriers and increasing available run-off room at Turns One and Seven/Eight, “all which would be addressed by next spring with really no major capital expenditure on the park’s behalf,” said Hallman. “The biggest challenge we’re dealing with, there’s not been a World Superbike event in this country in years. Now you have two MotoGP events coming onto the scene and potentially a third event with World Superbike at Miller [Motorsports Park]. So all that factors into our decision. How far can the industry dollars go? “I think it’s [decision] really in our court at this point. Maurizio has laid out the terms and negotiated as far as he will go. And now we need to decide if we will accept the terms that are on the table. We have a little bit of due diligence to do with some of our community partners, and once we have done that and completed that, we will be making that decision. “We feel strongly Barber Motorsports Park is one of the finest road racing venues in this country. It is the perfect setting for an international event of this magnitude. We like the spot on the calendar, being the first, potentially, for global motorcycle events in this country. We like the fact that we’re the only one in the southeastern United States, which I think manufacturers and fans will love. Of course, the southeastern United States is one of the fastest growing areas in the country for motorcycle enthusiasts. The museum adds another dimension that no other circuit in this country has, with the world’s largest private collection of motorcycles. It’s near a major metropolitan area with the hotels and airport in very close proximity. And the beauty of the facility is second to none. It’s just a beautifully-landscaped environment and very spectator-friendly. So all of the ingredients are there. We really want to make this happen, [but] we’ve got to make sure these final business issues are issues that we can live with.”