Has Vasser Sullivan saved the best for last with its Lexus RC F GT3 at the Rolex 24?

In 2017, the Lexus RC F GT3 made its first appearance in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Two years later, Vasser Sullivan Racing took over as Lexus’ IMSA GTD representative, and finished second in class at the Rolex 24 At Daytona with one of its two cars.

In the years since, that’s as close as Vasser Sullivan Racing and the Lexus RC F GT3 have come to winning the Rolex 24, something that has been on Jack Hawksworth’s mind a lot going into the 64th edition.

“This has been eluding us for a while,” he admitted. “I can't imagine what it would be like to win this thing. It would be so special. We're going to go out there and give it our best, and if it happens, it happens, and fantastic. To be honest, it would be unbelievable, so we're definitely chasing it and putting our best foot forward.”

Hawksworth has been a part of Lexus’ IMSA GT3 program since the very beginning, going back to 2017 and '18 when 3GT Racing operated the RC F GT3 in the WeatherTech Championship. He was an easy choice to carry over into the Vasser Sullivan era, and achieved his greatest accomplishment in 2023 – when he and fellow Englishman Ben Barnicoat won the GTD PRO drivers’ title.

Barnicoat and Hawksworth won a championship, the 12 Hours of Sebring and Petit Le Mans together in a Vasser Sullivan RC F GT3. At the crossroads of Toyota’s GT3 history, the dream team is back together in the No. 14 Lexus, hoping to finally get the RC F’s first Rolex 24 win in what will almost certainly be its last chance to win the race.

“It's actually the first time since my first race for the team that it's just been myself, Jack and Kyle (Kirkwood),” said Barnicoat. “In 2022 we had that line-up here at Daytona. Then ’23, ’24, ’25, in the No. 14 there's always been some kind of variation, someone new coming in. It's massively exciting that this feels like our best man forward for this 24-hour race. Together as a trio, we won Sebring, Petit Le Mans, so we're very excited for the year, very excited to be here this weekend with that line-up.”

The big change came last year when Hawksworth and Barnicoat were separated. Barnicoat stayed in the No. 14 GTD PRO car, going with Aaron Telitz. Hawksworth moved back to GTD in the No. 12, sharing with Parker Thompson.

Between them, Vasser Sullivan Racing’s two cars went winless for the first time ever. At least Hawksworth and Thompson came close with five podiums – including a string of three straight runner-up finishes from Sebring to Laguna Seca. But the talented tandem of Barnicoat and Telitz never even reached the GTD PRO podium, in a season where Barnicoat missed significant time due to injuries sustained in a mountain biking accident.

So it was only right for Barnicoat and Hawksworth to re-unite for the RC F GT3’s final season. And once again, they’ll have IndyCar ace Kirkwood helping out at the big endurance races, including Daytona.

“Kyle's firstly a fantastic driver. Just look at what he's achieved across his junior open-wheel career, also what he's achieved in IndyCar,” Barnicoat says of his co-driver, who's coming off his best IndyCar season to date. “But he's also such a great personality. He's been a part of the team for a long time – everyone knows him really well. He knows the car really well. And I don't think you could really get a better fit for the endurance role, on all grounds, personality and driving ability. He just gets in the car, no matter what the handling is, gets on with his job.”

“And not only that, we're here for two weeks. You’ve got to have good team camaraderie and have someone that you enjoy being around. And he definitely ticks every box.

“We're lucky to have him every year. I think we kind of worry that he’ll end up going elsewhere, especially with the Andretti ties to GTP (Andretti Global and Wayne Taylor Racing are both part of TWG Motorsports), but we're hanging on to him, and hopefully this is the year that we get him a watch.”

Make no mistake, a lot has been written about the RC F GT3’s age relative to its peers – it’s been practically unchanged since its first full season of international racing in 2017 – but it’s still capable, as its win in the 2025 FIA WEC finale in Bahrain demonstrated.

But at long last, its successor has been revealed and has a launch date. We can expect to see the new GR GT3 by Toyota make its international racing debut in 2027. And now that it’s had its formal reveal, Hawksworth and Barnicoat – who’ve tested and developed the deeply-camouflaged car at various circuits – can finally speak about their experience with the GR GT3 on the record!

“It was really fun to play a part in developing the car and seeing it kind of come from the ground up,” Hawksworth said. “A lot of really clever people have worked on it, and I think the car looks great. I was glad the reaction to the car seemed to be really positive. We're obviously excited for this season and what's ahead of us right now, but long term, we're also kind of chomping at the bit to get that car in a race situation.”

It may be the RC F GT3’s successor, but the four-liter, twin-turbo V8-powered GR GT3 represents a vast and fundamental change that Hawksworth is very much looking forward to.

“The car is very, very different to the RC F. Front-engined still, but other than that, everything is different. I think it has a slightly wider working window than the RC F, and I think it'll be a really, really competitive GT3 car on every single type of circuit we go to, which is obviously always the most important thing with the GT3 car,” he adds.

IMSA and the SUPER GT Series in Japan have been the two most successful markets for the RC F GT3 over the past decade – it raced in GT300 in Japan for two seasons as a prototype before it was sold to customers. But until the car came to WEC as part of the new LMGT3 class, it had virtually no presence in the European market, winning only one race in GT World Challenge Europe before customer support in the region was dropped after 2020.

Toyota has boasted about tailoring the GR GT3 to drivers of all skill levels, and if that promise holds true, Barnicoat says the car will be a challenger for victories in other major endurance races too, like the 24-hour races at Spa and the Nürburgring.

“As professional racing drivers, you want to race every week, and when you compare our program against the likes of other manufacturers, their top factory guys are racing every week in a different series somewhere around the world,” said Barnicoat. “And I think that's obviously what we would like to do. A lot of the focus around this new platform is to make it more customer friendly, and more accessible to all these markets. It's exciting for us that it's going to hopefully open doors to allow us to take on more of the big races, things like Bathurst, Spa 24 Hours, just giving us more opportunity to go and win.

“We've been lucky to do a lot of writing the history books for the U.S. success of Lexus, and I think we're looking forward to hopefully getting the opportunity to continue writing that history further around the world.”

But before they can begin to climb the mountains of race wins not yet taken, or even return to the summit of a GTD PRO title, Hawksworth, Barnicoat and the rest of the Vasser Sullivan Racing team have one more big job ahead of them next weekend at Daytona, in their old, but still very gold machine.