The British GT paddock is a friendly sort of place. Though big money is spent in just turning up, the teams and drivers are usually approachable even in the face of adversity. Nowhere is this truer than in GT4, where real enthusiasts follow their racing dreams for as long as the money holds out. Punching above their weight may be the order of the day for many of these and strong characters are required.
Twisted Team Parker put a toe into the British GT4 water at the end of 2013, the team having since shown consistent development underlined by strong results to place them in Championship contention in their first full season this year. Always approachable, owner-driver Adrian Barwick, his Pro counterpart Bradley Ellis and their team epitomise the privateer spirit of endurance racing.
More importantly, they as well as others we’ve mentioned form the critical core so easily overlooked in the pursuit of growth for these championships. Just like their competition there is true spirit in this young setup, which is partnered with the more experienced Team Parker Racing entry that has stepped up from Porsche Supercup. We were keen to dig deeper into what makes this affable team click.
How did this ambitious project come about?
Adrian Barwick: “Last summer I started to think about how much time you have in life versus money, etc. I’d had a reasonably good year in Caterhams and, courtesy of His Nibs, had come from the back of the grid to podiums and I was in love with my motorsport. But I can draw a parallel with doing some rock climbing and taking on Everest – to me this is the same difference. I wanted to take on a real challenge, which is just my way.
“So I approached Brad and he was up for it. To be quite frank the Ginetta was chosen because it had a good track record in GT4 and represented the better value package. I was a customer of Twisted [who produce bespoke high-spec Land Rovers and had contributed to some of the running costs of the Caterham] and said, ‘look, this is bigger – are you interested?’ I gave them the numbers, which were right off the top of my head… I had no idea… and they said yes. I wish I’d thought about it a bit more now..! Then Textureblast came up with some valuable support too and it started to move. One of the requirements of the entry is that as principle sponsor they have to be on the team name, so it became Twisted Team Parker. I cleared it with Stuart (Parker); I was already running with Stuart’s brother Andy in Caterhams and he’s been a great friend of mine. I asked if he was okay stepping up into GT4 and he approved.
“Brad had the brilliant idea of running in the last round of last year’s series. I didn’t think they’d let us in but we came in under the ‘Invitation’ banner. We had great support from Bernard Cotterell and SRO and got on the grid. We didn’t quite embarrass ourselves, but the car let us down. Nevertheless I was hooked. I’d done some endurance racing before and it just seemed the thing to go for. That’s how the team was born.”
Bradley Ellis is no stranger to British GT, having won the Championship in 2007 alongside Alex Mortimer, but what had he been doing in the downtime since?
“I did a little bit of FIA GT for a couple of years, since then I’ve been racing Radicals in club series. The Pro-Am stuff like that keeps me busy; I do a lot of driver coaching – guys similar to Ade, trying to bring them up to a level. The last four years have been working with a couple of those partners in Radical Endurance racing and it’s rewarding, we’ve had some good success. Like Ade, they get to a level and want to take the next step.”
Is working the pairing to its best potential and finding the optimum driver balance of more benefit than outright speed and even to a lesser degree development of the car itself?
BE: “It’s about finding the time out of the amateur driver and working that as a team. It’s not just the work he does on track, it’s the off-track training and preparation behind the scenes; making sure we’re both getting the right information to the team itself and developing the communication. Talking to our engineers I’ve got to know how to interpret what Ade is saying and pass that on to them in a language they understand. Sometimes how an amateur driver is feeling in the car isn’t the way I would explain the situation to an engineer so we can make progress. That’s where I think we’ve come on real strong. As for the car, I think this is the best we are going to get it with the Balance Of Performance being the way it is.”
AB: “To be honest though this is only our first full season of racing. I feel we’ve had a really good result so far. I’m comfortable with where we are at and yet there is still loads more for us to do, which is why I’m quite open in saying I’ve already committed to next year. And there may be a chance that as long as the deep end isn’t too deep… we may even take a look at GT3.
“Outside of a race weekend we test. I have other cars, one quicker, and it’s all about seat time for me, getting myself up to speed. Coming from a Caterham into this… to be honest first time out it was just terrifying. He (Bradley) was laughing; it’s probably one of the slowest things he’s ever seen but for me going down the Craner Curves at Donington for the first time was like, ‘Oh, My God..! It’s noisy, it’s fast… and it’s sliding’. I’ve been in Caterham R300s and, to be honest, the feel is not that different to the Ginetta, but you’re not in that big car. So we’ve built it from there. We’ve been using GT4 and GT3 simulators too so have taken a proper approach.
“For a younger guy Brad has an incredibly detailed way of coaching. I’ve watched and he doesn’t coach everyone the same way, which is brilliant – I don’t think it works if you try to do that. And we just find the way of unlocking my next ‘bit’. At the moment I personally think I am too far off his times, but I am improving. I doubt I will ever catch him.”
BE: “Not true. But when you do I’ll only turn it up anyway…”
AB: “Seriously, yesterday in qualifying every other Pro thought a mid 1:33 was enough. He comes in with a 1:32-something. It’s what he does, which makes life easier for me. I want to be in the 5’s. Four months ago I was in the 9’s, then I got into the 8’s quite quickly and I finally got the 6’s yesterday…”
BE: “If you’d had longer you would have done it.”
Apart from a couple of entries being more consistent, GT4 has not seen any real domination this year though?
BE: “There are those faster than our car. We’ve been the strongest Pro-Am pairing though; that shows in the championship positions. Where I find we really struggle is where we get a good result, say a win, we get a time penalty in the next race. That really kills us, whereas with the Silver / Silver driver pairings it doesn’t hurt them quite as much. So in our following race we seem to be struggling to break into the top five, where they can maybe creep back onto the podium. For us that really hurts.”
AB: “And that means me finding at least a second and a half,”
BE: “If you look at the combined times in qualifying here that’s realistic. So where we’ve qualified P3 for this, they’ve combined the best lap of both drivers so in theory we’re the third fastest pairing out there. Take Giddings and Wylie as one of the two pairings in front of us: two very good, very young drivers…”
AB: “I hadn’t looked at it like that… I feel much better,”
BE: “…then you’ve got Parfitt and Oliphant; they’ve been doing it a while. Oliphant’s doing a lot of mileage; Parfitt’s a great competitor and won it last year, so to be third behind them is respectable.”
The dynamic is different though in how your stints are strung together compared to theirs?
AB: “Yes. They are different strategies. I know I’ve got to hang on to the front runners, don’t give up too big a deficit, don’t make a mistake, get the best out of the tyres and bring it in. His natural pace hopefully will catch the best.”
BE: “We try to look at all aspects to make the whole thing more consistent. The other teams probably don’t go into it as deeply as we do. For example, we were doing practice pit stops earlier and we had a camera recording it for later analysis. I didn’t see any other team doing that even though they have a team manager overseeing things. It’s like a movie; you watch it a second time and you see things you didn’t catch first time round. For me if we can minimise our mistakes that’s where we can gain on the Silver/ Silver drivers’ consistency.”
AB: “Going back to our success at Silverstone, we didn’t make any mistakes. We just hung on to where we were and Brad just drove on and made progress. It sounds easy, but that’s how you win an endurance race.
“There is another X-Factor about this though. With no disrespect, the thing I notice as different is that the atmosphere is not always the same in other teams. Here we’re all friends. We all go out together, have travelled a lot around Europe racing together, living in each other’s pockets – we get on, all of us. Even when things are against us there is always great morale. It soon blows over.”
BE: “We’ve ensured as a team we’ve got the right people around us. Part of the deal is whenever he races he has the same No.1 mechanic. Consistency brings confidence, it’s important.”
AB: “So Craig, the man we call Dr. Love, has been with me in Caterhams for the last eighteen months. He’s not going to go anywhere else and whatever I’m in, be it a banger or whatever, he knows the way I work and is a calming influence. If he’s not saying much I know things are going well.”
BE: “If you look at any top sports personality, say in F1 for instance [that’s a quid in the tin for this writer…] they always build a team of right people around them. I know this is on a different level, but the same applies.”
Given the emergence of the semi-works assisted GT4 entries, how much more is there left in terms of the Ginetta’s potential in this category as a turn-key package?
BE: “I think we’re there now. The car is what it is with the Balance Of Performance we’ve been given, but the problem is that every manufacturer has been held back to the speed of the Aston. Rather than letting us do what we need to do we’re just struggling with the car – not because it’s the car itself, it’s because of the way we’ve had to compromise it to meet the BOP.”
AB: “Tom (Oliphant), who has done Supercup, was struggling with his yesterday. They’ve done some radical things with the Ginetta to slow it down, which makes it very difficult to drive.”
BE: “Lap times are one thing, but the biggest problem is where you actually come to race the Astons. We’re quicker through the corners, they’re quicker on the straights. The thing is they brake at the same point as we do. So you can’t out-brake them, you’re already ten metres behind because that’s what they’ve pulled on you in the straight; so you’ve either got to make a crazy lunge and crash into them or you have to sit behind. You’ll catch them at the apex and they’ll pull away on the next straight, so you can’t actually make any progress. For me, that means when you do pull a move you’ve got to make it stick. That’s alright when you’ve got Silvers against Silvers or Pros against Pros, but when the Am drivers have to race it brings in the risk of more mistakes being made. That for me is where this all becomes very hard. They need to slow the Aston Martins a little bit more in the straights so we can race them. I mean, they’re quicker than the Porsche which is known to be fast. I can just about race the Porsche – what he gains in the straights I can make up on the brakes and through the turns, but I can’t do that with the Astons. At Spa they were 15 to 20 kph quicker on the straights. I might as well just wave them by. They need to look at how the cars are held back a bit better, so everyone is equal in the same areas.”
As it turned out, the strategic options that planned to take the fight to the Astons were scuppered by an uncharacteristic trip to the beach at Clearways early in the race. Significant points lost now almost certainly means Team Twisted Parker’s championship charge could be over. However, Adrian Barwick will have bounced back by Donington and has a positive outlook for his endeavour:
“I am blessed in life. I packed in Investment Banking in the City in 2007 – as we say, the teats fell off that goat – but I am looking for something more meaningful that won’t take me back to London full time.
“Currently I do some consultancy work with Twisted, which I love – I’m very grateful to them as a company. But I still have ambition. Le Mans would be nice – it’s way out there in the distance, a speck on the horizon, but I’d love to get in there, I really would. It’s something to aim for. We’ll just take it one step at a time: next year GT4 / GT3, and let’s feed into it, see what’s around… and keep laughing.”
Martin Little
