Barker Has “Learned to Race Again” in First Full IMSA Season

Ben Barker said he’s enjoying the challenge of his first full season in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, describing it as a “baptism of fire.”

The Ford Racing factory driver joined the No. 64 Ford Mustang GT3 EVO lineup in the GTD Pro class alongside Dennis Olsen, who both came from the manufacturer’s FIA World Endurance Championship program with Proton Competition.

The pairing has had an up-and-down season with a best result of third in class at the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen in June.

The No. 64 squad currently sits eighth in the GTD Pro standings after most recently scoring a top-five at Road America.

“It’s certainly been tight,” Barker told Sportscar365. “As always with IMSA, it’s fortune. Right time, right place is critical.

“Sometimes we’ve been on the edge of having a really good strategy, but [it] just hasn’t quite fallen our way. But then other times it has, like the podium at Watkins. We were unfortunate at Daytona with the engine blowing up near the end.

“It’s not been the absolute cleanest, but equally I think we’ve shown good pace and I think we’ve developed the car to a point that it’s driving well.”

Barker, who completed a partial WeatherTech Championship season in 2014, explained that one of the biggest challenges in the series is his experience deficit on U.S. tracks compared to those on the WEC calendar.

“I think that when you’ve been around the block so many times, you’ve learnt a lot of tracks in your career. You almost learn how to learn a track, if that makes sense,” he said.

“We’ve done a bit of testing at some tracks, so they’re not all brand new, and some I’ve done 12 years ago. But I can’t remember a lot of them, to be honest. I remember coming to them, but not really the nuance of the track.

“They actually remind me of the UK tracks. In the sense that they’re quite old and they don’t have a lot of runoff. And they’re through wooded areas like [Road America], sort a bit like Oulton Park. Obviously, a bit more fast and flowing.”

Before this year, the 35-year-old Briton had competed in every WEC season since 2016, but said racing in IMSA has changed his opinion of the two championships.

“I think racing’s so much fun here [in IMSA],” said Barker.

“I feel like I’ve almost learned to race again, because WEC is usually so spread out. And it’s obviously neutralized by virtual safety cars which hold the gaps. [In IMSA] it’s always packing up after any incident with safety cars.

“It’s been super fun and elbows out, and there’s been a sort of added layer of adrenaline that maybe I didn’t have as much in WEC.

“WEC is great, and Le Mans is fantastic. I love Le Mans. It’s one of my favorite tracks so it’s a shame not to do that race.

“If I could do IMSA and just do Le Mans, that would be like the ideal [program]. But I think that scenario’s quite unlikely.”

Looking towards the end of the season, the Ford driver said the Multimatic Motorsports-run team is “trying to get the best results we can as a team.”

“We’re working really well with the sister car, and the four drivers work as though we’re driving one car, which is cool,” he said.

“I think that’s appreciated from everybody at Ford. The dynamic is really good, so the focus is really just to try and get either of the cars, ideally both, up front and get the best results we can on the back end of this year.”

Barker Has Long-Term Ambitions in IMSA

When asked Barker stopped short of confirming he would race in the WeatherTech Championship again next year but expressed his desire to return to the series for a second year with title ambitions in mind.

“I would like to be in one championship for a longer period of time because I think you really maximize yourself in that situation,” he said.

“To try and be in IMSA again for another two or three years or beyond would be amazing.

“It would be great because I think I could probably get my teeth into it. I think jumping around different race series where the rules are different, and maybe you don’t know the tracks as much, you’re always at a slight deficit.”