Anthony McIntosh has admitted that the pressure was on during his maiden FIA World Endurance Championship qualifying session at Interlagos yesterday (12 July) – with the hopes of an entire home nation resting squarely upon his shoulders...
McIntosh only began racing in 2021, starting out in the Mazda MX-5 Cup before progressing through the Lamborghini Super Trofeo, Pirelli GT4 America, Michelin Le Mans Cup, Italian GT Championship and Asian Le Mans Series, in which he triumphed in the GT class alongside Ben Barnicoat and Parker Thompson in Dubai back in February.
The American’s outings in the FIA WEC-supporting Super Trofeo sparked his interest in the discipline’s premier series, and McIntosh duly joined Racing Spirit of Léman for this weekend’s Rolex 6 Hours of São Paulo, sharing the French outfit’s LMGT3 category Aston Martin Vantage with local hero Eduardo Barrichello and Valentin Hasse Clot.
The championship’s regulations stipulate that each team must field its Bronze-rated driver in the first phase of qualifying, before the higher-ranked Silver driver takes over for Hyperpole in the ten cars that successfully advance to the second part of the session.
That meant that in order for Barrichello to take to the track in front of the passionate Brazilian crowd, McIntosh had to place inside the top ten on his series debut – in a car that his team-mate described as ‘really good over long stints but not usually that good over one lap’. No pressure, then…
“Coming into a new series at a new track and on new tyres, I knew I wasn’t going to have a lot of time in the car,” the 50-year-old acknowledged. “I just had free practice one, two and three to learn the set-up and get up-to-speed.
“‘Dudu’ (Barrichello) and Val (Hasse Clot) have been amazing with me, as has the whole team and championship. Dudu is very good at sim racing, and I spend a lot of time on the sim just trying to learn the tracks. I can tell you this track on the sim has a lot more grip than in real life!
“Usually I’ve been able to go to a track, and within eight to nine laps, be very, very close to the pros I’m driving with – but this track was difficult because Val got out of the car, and his eyes were absolutely like saucers and he looked at me, and he grabbed my shoulder and said, ‘there is no grip, so do not use any of the brake-markers we’ve been practising!’ So that was an eye-opener…
“Still, considering that normally, I qualify against a bunch of Silvers and I’m somewhere in the middle of the pack, I was pretty chilled and like, ‘yeah, no problem, I’ll just be in the top ten against these Bronze drivers’ but wow, with these guys, it was tough. It was close!”
Indeed, as the clock ticked down towards the chequered flag in the first part of qualifying, McIntosh sat on the bubble in tenth position, unable to improve any further and having to hope that nobody else behind would displace him in the closing moments. In the end, the Wisconsin native held on by a scant 26 thousandths-of-a-second – paving the way for Barrichello’s pole run…
“For the first time, I was starting to get panicked in the car,” he reflected. “My engineer said, ‘you’re seventh’ and I’m like, ‘seriously, that’s the lap time you gave me!’ He’s like, ‘no, you’re seventh, you need two more tenths’. And then he got on the radio again and said, ‘ok, now you’re tenth!’
“I remember when they brought me into the team, they said, ‘you have one job, which is to get into Hyperpole – that’s your only job!’ So I have this entire country looking at me like, ‘this is the only thing you have to do, really!’ I was sweating in the car, but I brought it round in the time they asked for and thought, ‘that’s good’ – until it wasn’t good!
“Then it was just sheer panic! They’re like, ‘can you give us two more tenths?’ So I sent it into Turns One and Two and had a nasty tank-slapper, and I got back on the radio and said, ‘I’m aborting the lap – there is not another lap in this thing.’ So it was closer than it should have been...”
The Rolex 6 Hours of São Paulo will begin at 11:30 local time (16:30 CEST) today – Sunday, 13 July.
Watch FIA WEC live or on-demand via the official FIA WEC TV app – your full-access pass to the FIA World Endurance Championship including the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans. Don’t miss a moment. For further information, check out the app.
