Booming manufacturer involvement in sportscar racing means the spotlight is on its brightest lights more than ever. BenBarnicoat's rich vein of form couldn’t be better timed ahead of the centenary 24hoursoflemans. WEC IMSA ⬇️
Booming manufacturer involvement in sportscar racing means the spotlight is on its brightest lights more than ever. And with a perfect record of podium finishes in two different disciplines on either side of the Atlantic on the run-up to the centenary Le Mans 24 Hours, Ben Barnicoat’s rich vein of form couldn’t be better timed.British representation in sportscar racing is in a healthy place at the moment.
But GT racing isn’t the only string to Barnicoat’s bow. Last month, his 100% podium record in 2023 was extended by taking third outright in Barcelona’s European Le Mans Series opener with AF Corse – despite being entered in the pro-am sub-division alongside Matthieu Vaxiviere and Francois Perrodo – on his first LMP2 outing in three years.
"Me and Jack get on so well as team-mates and we’re two guys who are probably in the primes of our career. I certainly am for sure"A key factor in their strong start, Barnicoat believes, is the mutual respect he has with Hawksworth, six years his senior. Each has an appreciation for the other's strengths, and operates “without any kind of ego” interference.“Me and Jack get on so well as team-mates and we’re two guys who are probably in the primes of our careers,” he says.
Barnicoat rates his VSR Lexus team as the best environment he's experienced in his racing career to date“Where you walked into the track at Turn 9 on the first day, there’s a little bit of tarmac,” Barnicoat recalls. “Straight away he says: ‘Did you guys see that new bit of tarmac? I think you might be able to put two wheels on that to open up the corner’.
“And at Long Beach when we had all the right ingredients, the car was fast enough and Jack and I were on it and then we got the win. We’re all in top form and we’re really in a good place to take a good fight to the championship. But there’s a long way to go.” “There’s not really a big back story to doing it,” he says. “There’s not a big particular reason other than that I really enjoyed racing LMP2 when I did it before and it’s something that I really wanted to do.
"Some guys will maybe be a little bit more dialled in than us, but I’m confident in the crew and I’ll be pulling as much information as I can from Norman to make sure I’m up to the job"He believes that there was little chance of matching the LMP2 pro-am and overall winning TF Sport-run Team Turkey entry in which Louis Deletraz overhauled Neel Jani’s Duqueine machine, but Barnicoat believes an outright rostrum “was an incredible achievement” in the stacked 18-car field.
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