Barnicoat Confident of Sebring Comeback After Tough Daytona

Ben Barnicoat says he’s confident that the Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus squad will bounce back for this weekend’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring after a disappointing result in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona.

Along with his co-drivers aboard the No. 14 Lexus RC F GT3, Jack Hawksworth and Kyle Kirkwood, Barnicoat finished the Rolex 24 tenth in the GTD Pro class, three laps off the lead, despite suffering no significant setbacks during the race.

It came amid a lack of pace across the board for Vasser Sullivan, as the GTD-entered No. 12 car of Frankie Montecalvo, Aaron Telitz, Benjamin Pedersen and Esteban Masson also failed to make an impact, ending up ninth in its class.

However, Barnicoat is optimistic that Sebring will be a different story after what he called the team’s strongest performance at Daytona in his time with the team.

“Looking at the result, it’s certainly not what we wanted nor what we are capable of,” Barnicoat told Sportscar365. “But honestly, it’s the best we’ve ever performed at Daytona. Internally we are actually extremely pleased with how the race went.

“As a team, hand on heart, it’s the best job we’ve ever done as a group, and the timesheets and end result didn’t match that. It was a weird feeling, because it was hard to see what we could have done better.

“We know we are in a really strong place as a team, and we have everything we need heading to Sebring.”

This week’s race will mark Barnicoat’s first Sebring outing since the 2024 running of the 12 Hours, as last year’s race was the first of three in the WeatherTech Championship — along with Long Beach and Detroit — he missed due to injury.

“I am really excited,” he said. “The last time I was there, I won! So hoping to pick up where I left off, that would be really nice. I know we are capable of.

“We’ve always been fast at Sebring, we’ve always been in contention for the win.

“The feeling in the team is great, the motivation is high, we’ve just got to see what happens when we get there.”

Barnicoat’s injuries, sustained in a mountain bike incident, also forced him to miss a significant chunk of his FIA World Endurance Championship campaign with the Akkodis ASP Lexus team, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Since then, his best result in WeatherTech Championship competition has been the fifth place he and then co-driver Telitz in the Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

While adamant the chapter is behind him, Barnicoat said that a relative lack of success since his return from injury has been the hardest thing to deal with.

“It’s all fully behind me,” he said. “I had three months out, three months of getting back into it, and now I feel fully back up to speed.

“I feel like I’m in a great spot; it’s just we haven’t had the results on the board. That’s been the toughest thing since I came back. Hopefully we can do that at Sebring.”