A busy September continued for Ben Barnicoat with a third successive race weekend, rejoining the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship for the penultimate round. Taking on the six hour ‘Battle on the Bricks’ at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Ben paired back up with teammate Aaron Telitz to climb the order and bring home his best IMSA result of the year, and a second top-5 result for the #14 Vasser Sullivan entry.
A tough qualifying for Aaron put the #14 Lexus RC F GT3 in P10 in the GTD Pro class. Ben’s teammate then took the opening stint, which was affected by various caution periods. Efforts in the early stages saw several position changes, with the order moving around as pitstop strategies started to come into play. A stop under Full Course Yellow after 90 minutes saw Ben take to the track for his first stint, still running inside the top-10. Maintaining position on the return to green flag running, Ben continued to battle hard, holding P8 as the race reached middle-distance, before a switch back to Aaron for his second stint.
After this shorter run, Ben was back in action with just over two hours to go. Once back on track, he ran a clean race, staying out of trouble and working on reducing the gap to the cars ahead, making steady progress as the time ticked by. Capitalising on mistakes and misfortune, while running a consistent closing stint, Ben climbed to P5 as the final 20 minutes approached. A late twist to the race saw an extended full course caution, bringing about a sprint to the line for the final laps. A well-managed restart saw Ben continue to pressure the group ahead while maintaining position, eventually claiming a solid P5 at the end of the six hours, and his best IMSA result of the year.
Taking the positives from a hard fight at the Battle on the Bricks, Ben explained:
“Considering we qualified 10th, I’m very happy to break into the top five at the end of the race today. It’s my best finish of the year in the #14 Vasser Sullivan Lexus RC F GT3, so have to take away the positives where you can.
“I feel like we executed a flawless race and got the best out of the package we had today. As always, the teamwork shown by our whole team was faultless - the crew didn’t put a foot wrong all day. We moved up the order into the top five, and could have possibly had a look for P4 at the end, but I didn’t want to risk what had been a really good day’s work, and brought home a solid result. Ultimately, we took a 10th-place car and finished fifth, so very proud of all the guys and Aaron for getting the most out of the day.”
Ben immediately returns to the cockpit of the Lexus RC F GT3 this weekend as the FIA World Endurance Series continues. Running with Akkodis ASP Team, round 7 of the championship heads to Japan for the 6 Hours of Fuji over the weekend, 26-28 September.