🇬🇧 Ben Barnicoat

Ben Barnicoat is a professional sportscar driver rated 4,945, placing him in the established professional band. This rating reflects a driver with a full-time seat at the top level of a major championship and wins in strong fields. Barnicoat holds Platinum FIA grading, the highest classification in GT and endurance racing, designating him a full professional in that discipline. His primary platform has been IMSA WeatherTech, where he has 48 starts for Vasser Sullivan Racing yielding 9 wins and 21 podiums across six seasons from 2021 to 2026. His signature achievement is the 2023 IMSA WeatherTech GTDPRO championship, won alongside Jack Hawksworth. He has also competed in the World Endurance Championship and European Le Mans Series, accumulating 2 podiums from 16 combined starts without a win, and has taken a sole victory in British GT Championship.[1]

Barnicoat's earlier career traced the traditional junior ladder. He contested Formula Renault Eurocup in 2015, scoring 3 wins and 6 podiums from 15 starts with Fortec Motorsports, then stepped up to FIA Formula 3 European in 2016 with HitechGP, adding 2 wins and 3 podiums from 25 starts. In single-seaters he finished ahead of drivers who went on to reach Formula 1; he beat Lando Norris twice and George Russell four times, though these were isolated results in junior categories where he did not compete consistently against them. His transition to sportscar racing from 2020 onward proved to be his landing place. In IMSA, his chief rivals have been Platinum-graded professionals: he holds a near-even head-to-head record against Antonio Garcia (22 wins, 23 losses in 45 races), a four-time IMSA champion, and has outscored Klaus Bachler, the 2024 WEC LMGT3 champion, in 35 shared races.[2]

Barnicoat averages an eighth-place finish across all 132 race starts on record and remains active in 2026 competition. His career has been built almost entirely in sportscar and endurance racing, the arena in which his Platinum grading applies. Recent headlines place him still contending for titles in IMSA and British GT, suggesting he remains in pursuit of further championships at the top end of his discipline.