Barnicoat Hails “Amazing Call” on Pit Lane for GTD Pro Win

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

Ben Barnicoat has hailed Vasser Sullivan’s “amazing call” on pit lane that propelled he and co-driver Jack Hawksworth to their second consecutive IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTD Pro class victory.

The drivers of the No. 14 Lexus RC F GT3 came out on top in Sunday’s Chevrolet Grand Prix at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, thanks to an early race pit call to short-fill the car and jump several cars in the pits.

Hawksworth started the two-hour and 40-minute LMP2 headline race from sixth in class but made up several positions on track prior to their first stop, and driver change to Barnicoat, who overtook the No. 59 Team RLL McLaren 720S GT3 Evo of Nikia Johnson on the restart.

“We always come here with a very fast race car but it’s just never worked out,” said Barnicoat. “We felt like we’ve been capable of this result for a very long time, it just never really clicked for us.

“We’ve always been caught out with yellows, strategy, incidents, and never got it over the line.

“But today, we started further back than I’d say we’d have on average. Yesterday we got caught out a little bit with our qualifying strategy. Jack did a great lap but a lot of people ran two sets of tires, which we didn’t do and started from sixth.

“He had a great start that put us into fourth. Then we had an amazing call on pit lane to not fill the car up fully, jumped to the lead and then there was no looking back.

“I think we owe this one to our engineer Geoff Fickling, strategist Dwight and everyone at Vasser Sullivan.”

Hawksworth added: “As Ben said, Geoff and Dwight and everyone at Vasser Sullivan called a fantastic strategy.

“The guys executed a really good pit stop; they were able to get the tires on really fast and get the fuel in, get the probe out, and we beat some cars on pit lane and got good track position.

“Ben did a great job to catch the McLaren sleeping there on the restart and controlled the race.

“It was just a mega, mega day. Perfect execution.”

Hawksworth Not Thinking About Championship Despite Closing Gap

With back-to-back class wins, Barnicoat and Hawksworth have closed to within 150 points of the GTD Pro championship lead with four races to go, amid a close battle with Corvette Racing by Pratt Miller Motorsports’ Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims, plus the AO Racing duo of Nick Tandy and Harry King, who are all separated by less than ten points.

Paul Miller Racing’s Neil Verhagen and Connor De Phillippi, who finished third in class on Sunday, continue to top the standings.

“There’s still a chance,” admitted Hawksworth. “We had a couple of heart-breakers, at Laguna and Detroit, and to be honest, we just tried to focus on win races and go out there and have fun from that point on.

“I don’t really care about the points at this moment. We’re just going to go out there, keep trying to do what we do and execute.

“If it works out, it works out. It would be a hell of a [comeback story]. We were a hell of a long way behind, and we’re still a long way behind, so we’ll just keep chipping away.”

Barnicoat added: “I think the pressure is on everyone else. Everyone’s been on great form on this team for quite some time and our results just haven’t shown that.

“We had potential from Sebring to win and it just never really gone our way.

“Now everyone’s just been doing the same thing. We’re having a bit of luck and we’re winning.

“We’re just going to keep doing that. If we win, we win, if we don’t, we’re just going to do our best and it’s as simple as that at this point of time.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John