Ably assisted by his season-long team-mate Ben Barnicoat, Jack Hawksworth claimed the IMSA SportsCar Championship’s GTD Pro title in his fifth season with the factory-backed Vasser Sullivan Racing Lexus squad.
Four class pole positions and two victories at Long Beach and Watkins Glen were the highlights. He finished on the podium of every race apart from Mosport, after Barnicoat lost a turf war with Patrick Pilet at Turn 1, and at Petit Le Mans (where they were crowned champions simply by starting), when Barnicoat’s off inflicted race-ending damage.
He also had four LMP2 Pro-Am outings in the European Le Mans Series with Algarve Pro Racing.
Barnicoat gives Lexus legend Hawksworth a vital push
Even Toyota’s US racing boss David Wilson admits that its Lexus RC F is a “bit of a Frankenstein” race car, but in its fifth season of IMSA competition, this old stager beat all the purpose-built GT3 racers in the IMSA SportsCar Championship’s GTD Pro class.
Vasser Sullivan’s marque stalwart Hawksworth has been driving (and winning) in the RC F since 2019 but fellow Briton Barnicoat, in his second season with the squad, has helped elevate it to championship-winning level.
“I’m very lucky to race alongside Jack, as he is definitely one of, if not the best guy in IMSA right now,” says Barnicoat of the former IndyCar driver. “There is no one else I’d rather go racing with.
“We’ve got one of the oldest cars in the field, but we performed week-in, week-out. Hopefully we’ll keep these good times rolling.
“I don’t think I realised the challenge of doing everything for the first time last season, but this year was way easier. I’ve been able to push Jack a little more, and get more from him, so that’s really pushed us on as a unit.”
The key to success was consistency – built on their foundation of scoring Lexus’s first endurance victory at Petit Le Mans in 2022 along with endurance driver Kyle Kirkwood. They scored nine podiums and four poles from 11 races in 2023.
"What we did well this year was win when we had the car where it was able to, and when we don’t have that we sometimes overachieved with the car that we had" Ben Barnicoat
“This programme has been around for many years, a long time before I joined it, and something that took my breath away was how invested Lexus is,” adds Barnicoat.
“What we’ve got going between myself and Jack as team-mates, that bond with the team and the manufacturer and TRD [Toyota’s racing arm] feels special.
“You always want to win them all, but I think what we did well this year was win when we had the car where it was able to, and when we don’t have that we sometimes overachieved with the car that we had. It was all about getting more performance from what you’ve got.”
