Ben Barker again produced a sterling performance at one of his favourite international circuits as he helped guide Gulf Racing to another top six finish in the ultra-competitive GT category of the FIA World Endurance Championship.
The Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas might be a relative newcomer to the global motorsport scene, but has quickly established itself as one of the more challenging venues on the calendar. Barker, however, has an impressive record at the circuit – both in the WEC and Porsche Supercup – and continued to build on that as the FIA’s premier sportscar series resumed with the six-hour Lone Star Le Mans race.
Despite the event being compressed into just two days, instead of the usual three, Barker and Gulf Racing were quick out of the blocks, posting rapid times throughout practice even though their focus remained on race set-up for a large part of the opening day. Those results naturally engendered confidence ahead of qualifying, only for Barker to experience an unnerving run in his pursuit of class pole.
“An intense Saturday was split between trying to find a fast car fast before the evening qualifying session and exploring the different Michelin tyre compounds to see which would be best suited to the six hours of racing,” the Briton explained, “We ended up third in FP1 and fourth in FP2, so I was feeling positive for qualifying.
“However, when I jumped in, I found that it was a struggle to slow the car as we had before, and that led to me posting a mediocre time that was slower than any of my practice runs earlier in the day. The team discovered that, essentially, one of the brake callipers was not working and, unfortunately, although they could fix the problem, the limited qualifying time – and the need for two drivers to post laps – meant that I could not have another run. It was a real shame as I could feel the car was on point through areas where I didn’t need to brake, but having the car running on three brakes was not a nice feeling.
“The good news was that the crew could fix the issue for [team owner] Mike [Wainwright] and he set his best time of the weekend – right in the mix with other AM drivers – so all was not lost.”
Wainwright was again entrusted with the opening stint on raceday and, with a good car underneath him, was able to gain a couple of places. However, having climbed to ninth in class, he was then faced with bridging a gap to eighth that had opened out as he battled for position.
Barker, taking over for his fellow countryman, then showed his affinity for the COTA layout, clawing his way up to P3 as clean laps and good strategy saw the black-and-orange Porsche 911 RSR pick up places with regularity. The Cambridge native’s second stint proved to be very fast, even though he had to factor in a degree of fuel saving as completing a full hour of racing on a single tank was proving difficult.
The fuel issue unfortunately caught up with the Gulf team as the race headed into its closing stages, with third driver Andrew Watson being denied a strong fifth position as he had to slow in order to ensure the #86 machine made it to the chequered flag.
“Andrew was having to lap around a second off his usual time in order to prevent us having to make a ‘splash-and-dash’ stop at the end,” Barker confirmed, “We still have to resolve some issues in the filling of our fuel tank and that ultimately cost us P5 this weekend.
“However, that shouldn’t take away from another great job by both the Gulf crew and my team-mates. We again showed that we had one of the fastest cars out there, and some of the fastest pit-stops ensured that we could climb from an admittedly unrepresentative P11 in qualifying all the way into the top five during the race.
“We now move on to Sebring, where we have some unfinished business from last year. After another great race performance, we should have finished P2, so we’re looking forward to putting that right next month.”
