A competitive all-round performance from Ben Barker and the Gulf Racing team at the 4 Hours of Shanghai bodes well for the rest of the 2019-20 FIA World Endurance Championship season despite not paying dividends in China.
All three members of the driving strength turned in drives that would have kept the #86 Porsche 911 RSR in the hunt for a top five finish had it not been for contact from a rival in the GT-Am class but, with the Gulf Racing pit crew again proving exemplary in all facets through the weekend, confidence is high for the remainder of the campaign.
With the Shanghai International Circuit notoriously hard on tyres, the team’s practice schedule focused on finding the right compound for race day and tweaking the #86 machine to get the best out of that rubber. However, the compromise to that came in the shape of the WEC’s limited tyre allocation, which prevented Barker and his team-mates from piling up the laps in the free sessions.
“We spent practice making changes to determine which tyre was going to be the best for the race, but it quickly became apparent that the hard compound was not the way to go,” Barker commented, “Once we had decided to focus on the medium tyre, however, we had to be careful how we used them as there were only so many available to us. Despite that, we did manage to find a set-up tweak at the very end of practice that allowed me to put the car P4 on the timesheets, so the team’s efforts paid off.”
A couple of further changes were made to the car for qualifying, but Barker and team owner Mike Wainwright still had to keep their laps to a minimum to preserve tyres for the race. The Cambridge-based Pro banged in a single flying tour, before Wainwright completed two of his own on the same rubber, and their combined performance was good enough to put the black-liveried Gulf car ninth overall in the tightly-contested GT-Am category.
“With only so many laps available to us, the qualifying result was pretty good,” Barker insisted, “I was pleased to be right up there amongst the Pro class drivers, while Mike was also competitive with those of a similar Am status, especially given that he was running on my used tyres.”
Wainwright was back behind the wheel of the #86 for the start of Sunday’s four-hour race, a comparative sprint in terms of WEC events. Underlining the strength of his qualifying effort, the team owner then proceeded to turn in one of his best race performances, taking the Gulf car up to fifth in class while in the midst of a group battling for third, before the handover to Barker dropped the team a few spots. Undeterred, Porsche veteran Barker then carved back through the field, gaining six places in under an hour to run second in the category and only denied the chance to go higher by the need for another driver change.
Wainwright got back behind the wheel to complete his minimum required time but, as has been his fate this season, was on the end of some bad luck when he was hit by one of the GT-Am Ferraris, pitching the black Porsche into a time-consuming spin. Having recovered and handed over to Andrew Watson, the Gulf team remained in the hunt for a top five finish, only for an ill-timed full course caution to come at just the right time for their rivals, many of whom were running a three-stop strategy to Gulf’s four.
“Those two incidents really kept us from fulfilling our potential,” Barker acknowledged, having completed the final stint with times that again ranked him well against his Pro rivals, “Mike was really unfortunate to have been hit by the Ferrari as he was in the middle of one his best weekends in the WEC and lapping really well. Once we had conceded the 25 or so seconds that it took to return to the track, we were always up against it, and the full-course caution ensured that it wasn’t going to be our race.
“That said, there is a lot to take away from China, with all three drivers turning in very competitive stints and the team again coming up trumps in the pit-stops. If we can repeat that next time out, we can certainly look forward to Bahrain.”
The 2019-20 WEC season continues at the Bahrain International Circuit over the weekend of 12-14 December.
